Does politician’s experience matter? Evidence from Peruvian local governments

Fernando Aragon and Ricardo Pique
Additional contact information
Ricardo Pique: Northwestern University, http://www.economics.northwestern.edu/

Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University

Abstract: How important for government performance is the on-the-job experience of politicians? This paper examines this question using the case of mayors in Peruvian municipalities and a sharp regression discontinuity design. We find evidence that experience has a significant, although small, effect on spending composition and coverage of some public services, such as electricity. There is, however, no significant effect on other measures of government policies, such as total spending, local taxes, or public investment. This lack of effect may reflect quick learning-by-doing or lack of electoral incentives for re-elected politicians. We find, for instance, that differences in technical capacity between rookie and experienced politicians disappear after few years and that, despite not facing term limits, experienced politicians are less likely to run, and win, the re-election. These findings challenge the view that politician’s on-the-job experience is important, and weaken arguments against term limits based on the need to retain experienced politicians.

JEL-codes: D73 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24
Date: 2015-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sfu.ca/repec-econ/sfu/sfudps/dp15-10.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sfu:sfudps:dp15-10

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6, Canada. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Working Paper Coordinator ().