We estimate the impacts of being connected to politicians on occupational choice. We use an administrative dataset collected in 2008-2010 on 20 million individuals and rely on naming conventions to assess family links to candidates in elections held in 2007 and 2010. We first estimate the value...

I develop and test two competing models assessing the impacts of targeted government transfers on a local incumbent’s electoral performance. I take advantage of the randomized roll-out of a large-scale Conditional Cash Transfer program in the Philippines, which offers an ideal setting to test...