political selection. Overall, we conclude that voters select more competent politicians when they face uncertainty about the …

The wage paid to politicians affects both the choice of citizens to run for an elective office and the performance of … sector, an increase in politicians' pay may change their mind. Second, if the reelection prospects of incumbents depend on … 2001 and test these hypotheses in a quasi-experimental framework. In Italy, the wage of the mayor depends on population …

politicians' quality is positively affected by their wage and apply a Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design relying on the fact … that in Italy the wage of the mayor increases non-monotonically at different thresholds. Results show that an exogenous …

geographical areas: incumbency increases turnout in the South of Italy, whereas we do not find any statistically significant effect … capital we speculate that this is the result of incumbent politicians using their resources to establish clienteles. …

. Our evidence shows that newspapers do not have a major impact on the selection of politicians, but they play a relevant … role in keeping politicians accountable once they are in office. Competition plays a relevant role, as the effects are not …

findings indicate that voters keep incumbent politicians accountable by conditioning their vote on the observed effects of …