Corruption has been recognized as a detrimental factor of the citizens’ satisfaction with the way democracy works in their country and their confidence with political institutions. On the contrary, the direct impact of the institutional context on political support is less clear and previous...

This paper studies the manipulation of electoral maps by political parties, known as gerrymandering. At the core of our analysis is the recognition that districts must have the same population size but only voters matter for electoral incentives. Using a novel model of gerrymandering that allows...

Using a novel biographical database including all Presidents and presidential candidates in Colombia for the period 1833-2010 I show that the value of a political connection can be quantified in terms of the votes transferred within a political network. I consider three types of political...