This paper examines the effect of women’s political empowerment on public spending efficiency in developing countries. Using a large panel of 126 developing countries over 1995–2021, the paper constructs public spending efficiency scores based on Stochastic Frontier Analysis, capturing...

Local governments in advanced democracies have increasingly struggled to attract political candidates, weakening electoral competition and accountability at the municipal level. While several factors may contribute to this trend, politicians' salaries represent one of the few policy levers that...

We study how politicians respond to the fact-checking of their public statements. Our research design employs a difference-in-differences approach, complemented by a randomized field intervention conducted in collaboration with a leading fact-checking organization. We find that fact-checking...

Over the past century, women have gained formal political rights, yet remain under-represented in leadership-partly due to lower demand for representation among women themselves. In this paper, we shift the perspective from why men extended political rights to women toward what shaped women's...

We study the role of mayoral gender in attracting public funding in Italian municipalities. We exploit a novel administrative dataset containing detailed information on all projects aimed at the digitalisation of local public administrations and funded under Italy's National Recovery and...

We study the role of mayoral gender in attracting public funding in Italian municipalities. We exploit a novel administrative dataset containing detailed information on all projects aimed at the digitalisation of local public administrations and funded under Italy's National Recovery and...

How shall publicly provided excludable goods be financed - by general taxation or user fees? The general conclusion of the existing literature is that exclusive tax financing is neither efficient nor desirable under widely shared distributive goals. A striking example is childcare because here...

Hodler and Raschky (2014) provide evidence for regional favoritism by documenting that subnational regions have more intense nighttime lights when they are the birth region of the country's current political leader than at other times. In this paper, we test the robustness of their findings...

Politicians can adjust the complexity of their communication to signal different things to different audiences: more complex language can indicate competence, while lower complexity may bring them closer to "common people". These strategic shifts in complexity, however, remain understudied. We...

This paper investigates gender-based differences in cooperativeness among French parliamentarians by analyzing legislative behaviors, such as cosponsorship and voting patterns. Using a comprehensive dataset covering all bills and amendments authored in France's Lower House between 2012 and 2022,...

We study how public disclosure of politicians' outside income affects their behavior. We exploit a disclosure reform targeting German federal MPs and tax-return data in a differencein-differences setup using unaffected state MPs as controls. MPs increase their outside income by 24%, driven by...

Over the past century, women have gained formal political rights, yet remain underrepresented in leadership - partly due to lower demand for representation among women themselves. In this paper, we shift the perspective from why men extended political rights to women toward what shaped women's...

First-generation immigrants face a seniority ceiling that limits their political incorporation as candidates and officeholders. Career ladders that require qualification time in lower positions create structural barriers for this group. We use linked data from Swedish electoral ballots and...

Does the outbreak of a major international war change political discourse? Drawing on theories of political communication and elite cueing, identity salience, and threat perception, we hypothesize that the outbreak of a war of aggression by a major power increases the use of nationalist rhetoric...

We study how connections to German federal parliamentarians affect firm dynamics by constructing a novel dataset linking politicians and election candidates to the universe of firms. To identify the causal effect of access to political power, we exploit (i) new appointments to the company...

Weschle (2024) examines the effect of UK legislators taking private sector jobs while holding office on their parliamentary behaviour. The published analysis employs two-way fixed effects and difference-in-differences as an identification strategy. In that analysis, which we were able to...

Despite progress made in recent years towards more gender balance in political representation, this goal has not been reached yet. Multidimensional indices and scoreboards are useful to keep track of progress and set backs, and identify areas for improvement. The Composite Indicators and...

To what extent can anti-corruption measures serve to limit patronage and corrupt networks effectively and sustainably in clientelist societies with a prevailing norm of corruption? We develop a political agency model in which office holders are motivated to reduce rent seeking behavior through...

Politiker, die vor ihrer politischen Karriere als Unternehmer aktiv waren bzw. Erfahrung in der freien Wirtschaft gesammelt haben, betreiben eine andere Wirtschaftspolitik und beeinflussen makroökonomische Variablen auf andere Art und Weise als Politiker ohne diese Erfahrung. Das zeigt eine...

We evaluate the impact of a recent reform that sharply increased the salaries of Italian local politicians on electoral competition and the valence attributes of the candidates elected. Exploiting misaligned election dates across Italian cities, we propose a novel methodology, the time-shifted...

Economic theory predicts that dishonesty thrives in secrecy. Yet, team-based decisions are ubiquitous in public policy-making. How does teamwork influence the tendency for selfdealings when public servants – both honest and corrupt – must work together to make decisions under the veil of...

We analyze whether mayors’ prior occupation in the local public administration matters for their performance. In theory, mayors’ professional background may shape their competence in bureaucratic tasks. We use the example of grant receipts for visible investment projects for which mayors...

Public disclosure laws on politicians' outside income aim to enhance electoral accountability, but their effects remain unclear and may backfire. Using a German disclosure reform, administrative tax data, and a difference-in-difference design, we show that MPs increased their outside income...

Personal relationships have historically been a significant influence in Thai culture, extending into national politics. Ties between members of the Senate and the House of Representatives through various networks are good examples of this observation. Academic research has suggested that such...

This paper investigates the causal effect of the term length of political executives on economic policy outcomes. To establish causality, we exploit the staggered adoption of four-year terms for governors across US states, using data for the period 1937-2008. We find that increasing governors'...

We study how political parties share power internally by analyzing the allocation of list positions to different factions. We develop a theory of intraparty bargaining in which list positions shape the mobilization efforts of party activists in different factions. Our results allow us to link...

This paper examines how natural disasters shape electoral preferences by analyzing the impact of earthquakes in Italy between 1990 and 2019. Using a staggered Difference-in-Differences design, we estimate that affected municipalities are more likely to elect female, more educated, and older city...

In recent years, advanced democracies have witnessed a marked decline in candidates for local government office, undermining electoral competition and accountability and triggering a sheer political recruitment crisis. Although several factors may contribute to this trend — such as generalized...

Many democracies allow their legislators to engage in private employment, but the consequences for parliamentary priorities are still poorly understood. We collect large-scale longitudinal data on outside employment and biographic characteristics for all members of the 18th German Bundestag, and...

We document an overrepresentation of politicians on corporate boards using data for Swiss federal legislators in 1931-2015. However, a close-election regression discontinuity design shows that electoral success explains at most a small part of this overrepresentation. We find small and mostly...

We study the reaction of low vs. high-skilled politicians to a reform, approved in Italy in 2011, that introduces stringent individual financial and career sanctions to local administrators who are judged responsible for their municipality’s bankruptcy. To this aim, we leverage exogenous...

It is well-established that political leaders matter for domestic outcomes, but statistical evidence for their relevance in international politics is still scarce. Here, we ask whether the personal relationship between political leaders can change the propensity for nonviolent conflict between...

This paper explores how female political leaders impact environmental outcomes and climate change policy actions using data from mixed-gender mayoral races in Brazil. Using a Regression Discontinuity design, we find that, compared to male mayors, female mayors significantly reduce greenhouse gas...