We analyze the topical question of how the compensation of elected politicians affects the set of citizens choosing to run. To this end, we develop a sparse and tractable citizen-candidate model of representative democracy with ability differences, informative campaigning and political parties....

We show that wage-taxfinanced subsidies encourage investment in risky education andoffer welfare gains. Tax competition and labour mobility maylead to substantial erosion of regional taxation. On the otherhand, mobility insures against region-specific shocks encouraginginvestment in education....

It may be in the interestof low-ability individuals to subsidize the education of high-abilityindividuals. The sufficient conditions are surprisingly mild:positive externalities in education and complementarity in productionbetween human capital and labor supplied by the low-ability...