a political economy model of congressional careers our main goal is to quantify the returns to a career in the united states congress we specify a dynamic model of career decisions of a member of congress and estimate this model using a newly collected dataset given estimates of the structural model we assess reelection probabilities estimate the effect of congressional experience on private and public sector wages and quantify the value of congressional seat moreover we assess how an increase in the congressional wage or the imposition of term limits would affect the career decisions of politicians and the returns from a career in congress

reducing bureaucratic corruption interdisciplinary perspectives on what works abstract this article offers the first comprehensive review of the interdisciplinary state of knowledge regarding anti corruption policies with a particular focus on reducing corruption among civil servants drawing on the work of economists political scientists sociologists and anthropologists we examine seven policy categories 1 rewards and penalties 2 monitoring 3 restructuring bureaucracies 4 screening and recruiting 5 anti corruption agencies 6 educational campaigns and 7 international agreements notably rigorous empirical evaluation is lacking for the majority of commonly prescribed anti corruption policies nevertheless we find growing evidence of the effectiveness of policies based on monitoring including anti corruption audits and e governance in addition adequate civil service wages seem to be a necessary but insufficient condition for control of corruption an emerging skepticism regarding the effectiveness of anti corruption agencies also is apparent in the literature we conclude with broader lessons drawn from our review such as the recognition that when corruption is a systemic problem it cannot be treated in the long term with individual level solutions

capital accumulation and the characteristics of private intergenerational transfers many recent studies of the process of family accumulation in general and household response to social security in particular have revealed growing dissatisfaction with the life cycle theory of saving see for example barro 1978 kotlikoff 1979 darby 1979 kotlikoff and summers 1981 kurz 1981 blinder gordon and wise 1981 david and menchik 1982 leimer and lesnoy 1982 an alternative to the life cycle hypothesis is expressed by defining the preference of each family over its own consumption as well as the welfare of the generations that follow thus each family consists of an infinite chain of generations who have interdependent preferences and for this reason we shall call it the inter generational hypothesis it was recently used by barro 1974 1978 to attack the conclusions of the life cycle hypothesis our purpose in this paper is to start the long road of studying the structure of the private inter generational transfer system with the aim of providing additional tests of the two competing hypotheses

does electoral accountability affect economic policy choices evidence from gubernatorial term limits this paper analyzes the behavior of u s governors from 1950 to 1986 to investigate a reputation building model of political behavior we argue that differences in the behavior of governors who face a binding term limit and those who are able to run again provides a source of variation in discount rates that can be used to test a political agency model we find evidence that taxes spending and other policy instruments respond to a binding term limit if a democrat is in office the result is a fiscal cycle in term limit states which lowers state income when the term limit binds

active and passive waste in government spending evidence from a policy experiment we propose a distinction between active and passive waste as determinants of the cost of public services active waste entails utility for the public decision maker whereas passive waste does not we analyze purchases of standardized goods by italian public bodies and exploit a policy experiment associated with a national procurement agency we find that i some public bodies pay systematically more than others for equivalent goods ii differences are correlated with governance structure iii the variation in prices is principally due to variation in passive rather than active waste and iv passive waste accounts for 83 percent of total estimated waste

the limits of meritocracy screening bureaucrats under imperfect verifiability abstract does bureaucratic ability predict promotion in governments we show that self reported performance in enforcing the one child policy predicts mayoral promotion in china however misreporting handicaps screening a non manipulated performance measure does not predict promotion we show that this is consistent with a model where a government has a meritocratic objective but underestimates the imperfect verifiability of performance rather than a model where a government is only interested in the illusion of meritocracy thus despite meritocratic intentions we challenge the notion that a successful promotion system effectively substituted for democratic institutions in explaining chinese growth

on the form of transfers to special interests an important question in political economy concerns the form of transfers to special interests the chicago view is that political competition leads politicians to make such transfers efficiently the virginia position is that lack of information on the part of voters leads politicians to favor inefficient sneaky methods of redistribution this paper analyzes the form of transfers in a model of political competition in which politicians have incentives to make transfers to special interests it shows that when voters have imperfect information about both the effects of policy and the predispositions of politicians inefficient methods of redistribution may be employed

paying politicians theory and evidence this paper looks at the theory behind the idea that paying politicians better will improve their performance the paper lays out a political agency model with adverse selection and moral hazard where politicians are subject to two period term limits this model provides a number of predictions about how the pay of politicians affects agency problems we also consider what happens when the pool of politicians is endogenous the main ideas in the model are confronted with data on u s governors jel d72 j33

radio s impact on public spending if informed voters receive favorable policies then the invention of a new mass medium may affect government policies since it affects who is informed and who is not these ideas are developed in a voting model the model forms the basis for an empirical investigation of a major new deal relief program implemented in the middle of the expansion period of radio the main empirical finding is that u s counties with many radio listeners received more relief funds more funds were allocated to poor counties with high unemployment but controlling for these and other variables the effects of radio are large and highly significant

exposing corrupt politicians the effects of brazil s publicly released audits on electoral outcomes author s finan frederico ferraz claudio abstract this paper examines the extent to which access to information enhances political accountability based upon the results of brazil s recent anti corruption program that randomly audits municipal expenditures of federally transferred funds it estimates the effect of the disclosure of local government corruption practices upon the re election success of incumbent mayors in municipal elections comparing municipalities which were randomly audited before the elections with those audited after the analysis shows that the disclosure of audit results had a significant impact on the re election rates of mayors found to be corrupt for a one standard deviation increase in reported corruption the audit policy reduced the incumbent s likelihood of re election by 25 percent this effect is more pronounced in municipalities where radio stations are present and higher levels of corruption are identified these findings highlight the value of information and the role of the media in reducing informational asymmetries in the political process thus enabling voters to not only hold corrupt politicians accountable but also to reward non corrupt politicians

an information rationale for the power of special interests political decisions are often biased in favor of special interests at the expense of the general public and they are frequently inefficient in the sense that the losses incurred by the majority exceed the gains enjoyed by the minority this article explains the bias in terms of information asymmetries and the free rider problem first incumbents increase their reelection prospects by biasing policy toward groups that are better able to monitor their activities second because smaller groups are better able to overcome the free rider problem of costly monitoring policy will be biased in their favor third the effect of asymmetric monitoring on voter welfare is ambiguous the inefficiencies created by the policy bias are offset by a positively valued selection bias incumbents of above average quality are more likely to survive voter scrutiny than are low quality types

the political economy of government responsiveness theory and evidence from india the determinants of government responsiveness to its citizens is a key issue in political economy here we develop a model based on the solution of political agency problems having a more informed an politically active electorate strengthens incentives for governments to be responsive this suggests that there is a role both for democratic institutions and the mass media in ensuring that the preferences of citizens are reflected in policy the ideas behind the model are tested on panel data from india we show that public food distribution and calamity relief expenditure are greater controlling for shocks where governments face greater electoral accountability and where newspaper circulation is highest

incumbent performance and electoral control in the pure theory of electoral competition citizens compare the platforms of the candidates and vote for the one whose platform is preferred candidate strategies are identified with promises about future performance in office models of this sort have been developed in both static mckelvey 1975 and dynamic kramer 1977 i settings and all appear to have the property that if the set of alternatives is large enough in some sense equilibrium platforms rarely exist but these models have another feature that is quite as disturbing as their instability in the static setting discussed by mckelvey little attention is paid to the possibility that once in office the politician s preferences may diverge from those of his constituents and that he may therefore choose policies at variance from his platform instead it is simply assumed that promises will be kept whether or not such behavior is congruent with the interest of the officeholder it is sometimes argued that an enforcement mechanism may exist to discipline politicians for failing to keep promises but without a specification of the mechanism it is not obvious that it would be in the interests of the

globalization and labor conditions working conditions and worker rights in a global economy this book explains how three major mechanisms of globalization international trade international migration and the activities of multinational companies have altered working conditions and labor rights around the world during the 20th century drawing on analyses of a database on international labor conditions assembled for this project and a growing research literature on globalization and labor conditions the book finds that trade migration and multinational companies are associated with improvements in world labor conditions

busting the princelings the campaign against corruption in china s primary land market using data on over a million land transactions during 2004 2016 where local governments are the sole seller we find that firms linked to members of china s supreme political elites the politburo obtained a price discount ranging from 55 4 to 59 9 compared with those without the same connections these firms also purchased slightly more land in return the provincial party secretaries who provided the discount to these princeling firms are 23 4 more likely to be promoted to positions of national leadership to curb corruption president xi jinping stepped up investigations and strengthened personnel control at the province level using a spatially matched sample e g within a 500 meter radius we find a reduction in corruption of between 42 6 and 31 5 in the provinces either targeted by the central inspection teams or whose party secretary was replaced by one appointed by xi accordingly this crackdown on corruption has also significantly reduced the promotional prospects of those local officials who rely on supplying a discount to get ahead

labor supply of politicians using data on members of the european parliament meps we examine the impact of salaries on the composition and the behavior of legislators employing a differences in differences approach we exploit the introduction of a law that equalized meps salaries which had previously differed by as much as a factor of 10 increasing salaries raises the fraction of meps who run for re election but decreases the quality of elected meps proxied by college quality salary has no discernible impact on effort or legislation output higher salaries induce more political competition

television and voter turnout i use variation across markets in the timing of television s introduction to identify its impact on voter turnout the estimated effect is significantly negative accounting for between a quarter and a half of the total decline in turnout since the 1950s i argue that substitution away from other media with more political coverage provides a plausible mechanism linking television to voting as evidence for this i show that the entry of television in a market coincided with sharp drops in consumption of newspapers and radio and in political knowledge as measured by election surveys i also show that both the information and turnout effects were largest in off year congressional elections which receive extensive coverage in newspapers but little or no coverage on television

power to the people evidence from a randomized field experiment on community based monitoring in uganda this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled power to the people evidence from a randomized field experiment on community based monitoring in uganda intervention started in 2004 and consisted of a training and a six month follow up in uganda the study observed that localized nongovernmental organizations encouraged communities to be more involved with the state of health service provision and strengthened their capacity to hold their local health providers to account for performance the community based monitoring project increased the quality and quantity of primary health care provision the program led to a significant increase in the weight of infants by 14 z scores and a significant decrease in child mortality by 33 utilization of outpatient services was significantly higher 20 percent in the treatment group and the overall effect across utilization measures is large and significant funding for the study derived from bank netherlands partnership program world bank research committee world bank africa region division swedish international development agency department for research cooperation

the political economy of dynamic elections accountability commitment and responsiveness we survey the literature on dynamic elections in the traditional settings of spatial preferences and rent seeking under perfect and imperfect monitoring of politicians we define stationary electoral equilibrium which encompasses notions used by barro 1973 ferejohn 1986 banks and sundaram 1998 and others we show that repeated elections mitigate the commitment problems of politicians and voters and that a responsive democracy result holds under general conditions term limits however attenuate the responsiveness finding we also touch on related applied work and we point to areas for fruitful future research including the connection between dynamic models of politics and economics

monitoring corruptible politicians does monitoring politicians corrupt activities induce a sustained reduction in corruption we use longitudinal data on publicly released audits of municipal governments in puerto rico to answer this question we find that corruption is considerably lower in municipalities with timely audits before an election however these municipalities do not exhibit decreased levels of corruption in subsequent audits in spite of this mayors in municipalities audited preceding the previous election have higher re election rates suggesting that audits enable voters to select more competent politicians we conclude that audit programs must be timely sustained and long term commitments in order to be effective

fighting corruption to improve schooling evidence from a newspaper campaign in uganda what are the most effective ways to increase primary school enrollment and student learning we argue that innovations in governance of social services may yield the highest return since social service delivery in developing countries is often plagued by inefficiencies and corruption we illustrate this by using data from an unusual policy experiment a newspaper campaign in uganda aimed at reducing capture of public funds by providing schools parents with information to monitor local officials handling of a large education grant program the campaign was highly successful and the reduction in capture had a positive effect on enrollment and student learning jel d73 i22 o12

do better paid politicians perform better disentangling incentives from selection the wage paid to politicians affects both the choice of citizens to run for office and the performance of those who are appointed first if skilled individuals shy away from politics because of higher opportunities in the private sector an increase in politicians pay may change their mind second if the re election prospects of incumbents depend on their in office deeds a higher wage may foster performance we use data on all italian municipal governments from 1993 to 2001 and test these hypotheses in a quasi experimental setup in italy the wage of mayors depends on population size and sharply rises at different thresholds we apply a regression discontinuity design to the only threshold that uniquely identifies a wage increase 5 000 inhabitants exploiting the existence of a two term limit we further disentangle the composition from the incentive component of the effect of the wage on performance our results show that a higher wage attracts more educated candidates and that better paid politicians size down the government machinery by improving efficiency importantly most of this effect is driven by the selection of competent politicians rather than by the incentive to be re elected

electoral accountability and corruption evidence from the audits of local governments we show that political institutions affect corruption levels we use audit reports in brazil to construct new measures of political cor ruption in local governments and test whether electoral account ability affects the corruption practices of incumbent politicians we find significantly less corruption in municipalities where mayors can get reelected mayors with reelection incentives misappropriate 27 percent fewer resources than mayors without reelection incentives these effects are more pronounced among municipalities with less access to information and where the likelihood of judicial punish ment is lower overall our findings suggest that electoral rules that enhance political accountability play a crucial role in constraining politician s corrupt behavior jel d72 k42 017

the political resource curse this paper studies the effect of additional government revenues on political corruption and on the quality of politicians both with theory and data the theory is based on a political agency model with career concerns and endogenous entry of candidates the data refer to brazil where federal transfers to municipal governments change exogenously at given population thresholds allowing us to implement a regression discontinuity design the empirical evidence shows that larger transfers increase observed corruption and reduce the average education of candidates for mayor these and other more specific empirical results are in line with the predictions of the theory jel d72 d73 h77 o17 o18

popularity shocks and political selection abstract we observe that popularity shocks are crucial for electoral accountability beyond their effects on voters behaviors by focusing on brazilian politics we show that the disclosure of audit reports on the mis use of federal funds by local administrators affects the type of candidates who stand for election when the audit finds low levels of corruption the parties supporting the incumbent select less educated candidates on the contrary parties pick more educated candidates when the audit reveals a high level of corruption these effects are stronger in municipalities that have easier access to local media