We study the recruitment of individuals in the political sector. We propose an equilibrium model of political recruitment by two political parties competing in an election. We show that political parties may deliberately choose to recruit only mediocre politicians, in spite of the fact that they...

We analyze the career profiles of Italian legislators in the post-war period. Using a unique, newly collected dataset that contains detailed information on all the politicians who have been elected to the Italian Parliament between 1948 and 2008, we address a number of important issues that...

We study the initial recruitment of individuals in the political sector. We propose an equilibrium model of political recruitment by two political parties competing in an election. We show that political parties may deliberately choose to recruit only mediocre politicians, in spite of the fact...

We study the recruitment of individuals in the political sector. We propose an equilibrium model of political recruitment by two political parties competing in an election. We show that political parties may deliberately choose to recruit only mediocre politicians, in spite of the fact that they...

Two main career paths are prevalent among politicians in modern democracies: there are career politicians (i.e., politicians who work in the political sector until retirement), and political careers (i.e., there are politicians who leave politics before retirement and work in the private...

Two main career paths are prevalent among politicians in modern democracies: there are career politicians (i.e., politicians who work in the political sector until retirement), and political careers (i.e., there are politicians who leave politics before retirement and work in the private...

In this paper, we study the initial recruitment of individuals in the political sector. We propose an equilibrium model of political recruitment by a party who faces competition for political talent from the lobbying sector. We show that a political party may deliberately choose to recruit only...

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between the transparency of politics and the quality of politicians in a model of parties' political recruitment. We find that an increase in the transparency of politics reduces the average quality of the politicians a party recruits in equilibrium