-ideological voters, who care about national and local policies, strongly prefer experts. We show that parties compete on good politicians … prediction. We find that politicians with higher ex-ante quality − as measured by years of schooling, previous market income, and …, the characteristics of politicians belonging to opposite parties converge to high-quality levels in close races …

We construct an election game to study the electoral impacts of biased candidate endorsements. We derive a set of … testable predictions. We test these in a laboratory experiment and find that observed election outcomes and vote shares are … well predicted. We find no support, however, for our prediction that the relationship between election outcome and the …

interest group's campaign contributions to politicians. We uncover a robust hump-shaped relationship between the voting share … estimates of electoral uncertainty and politicians effectiveness as perceived by the interest groups. Our approach also … implicitly delivers a novel method for estimating the impact of campaign spending on election outcomes: we find that an …

We use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effect of election to political office on natural … election appear in the mid-1800s, and grow notably larger when we restrict the sample to later years. We also analyze …

dataset of attacks directed towards Italian local politicians to study how (and why) criminal organizations use violence … outcome and ii) after elections, to influence politicians from the beginning of their term. We provide causal evidence in … favor of the latter hypothesis. The probability of being a target of violence increases in the weeks right after an election …

The paper provides evidence for the existence of a midterm election effect. By examining the quarterly total returns on … quarter of a midterm election year and the following two quarters. This compounds to nearly 25% in those three quarters … year of a presidential term effect is weaker than the examined midterm election effect …

This paper evaluates the effects of encouraging the selection of local politicians in India via community …-based consensus, as opposed to a secret ballot election. While secret ballot elections prevent vote capture by guaranteeing voter … candidates, elected politicians, government budgets and workfare employment at the village level, I show that incentives for …

policies and the success of dynastic politicians. Electoral success of politicians depends on their ability to implement better … policies for the voters because campaign promises are empty. Good politicians are more likely to implement the policy that … maximizes social welfare. Dynastic politicians are believed to be good or bad depending on the policy implemented by their …

prosecutors, politicians and bureaucrats conducted in 7 states. The paper contributes to bridging the gap between the literatures …