-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 …

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 …

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 …

intensely about. We develop a model in which office and policy motivated politicians choose to support or oppose regulations on … these issues. We derive conditions under which politicians flip-flop, voting according to their policy preferences at the … beginning of their terms, but in line with the preferences of single-issue minorities as they approach re-election. To assess …

for contesting elections, making it critical to understand the role of politicians' education in their performance. We … and less-educated politicians. We find that narrowly electing a graduate leader, as compared to a non-graduate leader, in …

This paper estimates the causal impact of electing criminally accused politicians and their nature of criminality on …

for contesting elections, making it critical to understand the role of politicians' education in their performance. We … and less-educated politicians. We find that narrowly electing a graduate leader, as compared to a non-graduate leader, in …

A large theoretical and empirical literature explores whether politicians and political parties change their policy … attitudes on important policy issues? Problems of reverse causality and omitted variable bias make this a difficult question to … municipal election districts. To identify causal effects, we take advantage of large nonlinearities in the function which …