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Glaeser, Edward Ludwig; Shleifer, Andrei - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2002

James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston, used wasteful redistribution to his poor Irish constituents and incendiary rhetoric to encourage richer citizens to emigrate from Boston, thereby shaping the electorate in his favor. Boston as a consequence stagnated, but Curley kept winning...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005710665

The Electoral Advantage to Incumbency and Voters' Valuation of Politicians' Experience: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Elections to the U.S...

Lee, David S. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2001

Using data on elections to the United States House of Representatives (1946-1998), this paper exploits a quasi-experiment generated by the electoral system in order to determine if political incumbency provides an electoral advantage - an implicit first-order prediction of principal-agent...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005774786

Democracy Undone. Systematic Minority Advantage in Competitive Vote Markets

casella, alessandra; Turban, Sébastien - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2012

We study the competitive equilibrium of a market for votes where voters can trade votes for a numeraire before making a decision via majority rule. The choice is binary and the number of supporters of either alternative is known. We identify a sufficient condition guaranteeing the existence of...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011252333

Who Should Govern Congress? Access to Power and the Salary Grab of 1873

Alston, Lee J.; Jenkins, Jeffery A.; Nonnenmacher, Tomas - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2005

We examine the politics of the %u201CSalary Grab%u201D of 1873, legislation that increased congressional salaries retroactively by 50 percent. A group of New England and Midwestern elites opposed the Salary Grab, along with congressional franking and patronage-based civil service appointments,...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005089236

The Political Resource Curse

Perotti, Roberto; Tabellini, Guido; Brollo, Fernanda; … - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2010

The paper studies the effect of additional government revenues on political corruption and on the quality of … implications of the theory and identify the causal effect of larger federal transfers on political corruption and the observed … transfers increase political corruption and reduce the quality of candidates for mayor. …

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008622357

Conscription as Regulation

Mulligan, Casey; Shleifer, Andrei - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2004

We examine the practice of military conscription around the world from the perspective of two standard theories, and a new one, which emphasizes the fixed cost of introducing and administering the draft as a deterrent to its use. We find that, holding the relative size of the military constant,...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005050276

Pork for Policy: Executive and Legislative Exchange in Brazil

Alston, Lee J.; Mueller, Bernardo - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2005

The Brazilian Constitution of 1988 gave relatively strong powers to the President. We model and test Executive-Legislative relations in Brazil and demonstrate that Presidents have used pork as a political currency to exchange for votes on policy reforms. In particular Presidents Cardoso and Lula...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005575854

Factions and Political Competition

Persico, Nicola; Silverman, Dan; Rodríguez-Pueblita, … - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2007

This paper presents a new model of political competition where candidates belong to factions. Before elections, factions compete to direct local public goods to their local constituencies. The model of factional competition delivers a rich set of implications relating the internal organization...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005718155

The Dynamics of Firm Lobbying

Kerr, William R.; Lincoln, William F.; Mishra, Prachi - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2011

We study the determinants of the dynamics of firm lobbying behavior using a panel data set covering 1998-2006. Our data exhibit three striking facts: (i) few firms lobby, (ii) lobbying status is strongly associated with firm size, and (iii) lobbying status is highly persistent over time....

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009359896

Private Returns to Public Office

Fisman, Raymond; Schulz, Florian; Vig, Vikrant - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2012

We study the wealth accumulation of Indian parliamentarians using public disclosures required of all candidates since 2003. Annual asset growth of winners is on average 3 to 6 percentage points higher than runners-up. By performing a within-constituency comparison where both runner-up and winner...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011271399