and implement public policies, we show that examination takes place in spite of, rather than thanks to, elections …. Elections are needed as a carrot and a stick to motivate politicians, yet politicians who are overly interested in re …

Information affecting a candidate's reputation might have significant electoral consequences. Do candidates respond to … the release of information? Using Brazilian elections and audits as an exogenous source of information, I show that both … incumbent and challenger increase their campaign spending when detrimental information affects the incumbent's reputation …

threshold. Thus, the median voters' ideal policy may not obtain in contested elections if policy control is imperfect, even when … the cost of running as a candidate is arbitrarily small. -- elections ; polarization ; strategic delegation ; bureaucracy …

describing the role of elections and explaining policy choices. In our model, politicians differ in their motives of running … if unseated. This finding exhibits the disciplining function of elections. A striking result in our paper is that bad …

Italian municipal elections held from 1993 to 2011. We firstly estimate a municipal fixed effects model and show that an …

experiment is the abolishment of an explicit electoral threshold (the so called "five percent hurdle") for local elections in … elections, but local politicians from large mainstream parties had the ability to adjust municipal political institutions in …

information on the electoral results of Italian municipal elections over the period 1993-2011. Endogeneity issues are handled …