Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. We develop a model of the incentives faced by members of parliament (MPs) when deciding whether to engage in eort for their constituencies to assess the eects of their having a criminal background. Political representatives with criminal backgrounds are considered a great problem in many countries. In particular in India, a public disclosure revealed that a large proportion of politicians currently face criminal charges. This has led to a heated public debate and emerging literature assessing the causes and eects of this disturbing phenomenon. We use a comprehensive set of three proxies to meausure eort in the 14 th Lok Sabha over the 2004-2009 legislative period: attendance rates, parliamentary activity, and utilization rates of a local area development fund. We nd that MPs facing criminal accusations exhibit on average about 5% lower attendance rates and lower fund utilization rates, and less (but insignicantly) parliamentary activity. As predicted by the model, these dierences depend on the development level of the constituency, a proxy for rent-seeking possibilities and monitoring intensity. We argue and demonstrate why these negative relations should constitute an upper bound estimate of the causal eect, and show that even under conservative assumptions the eect is unlikely to be caused by unaccounted selection-bias. Terms of use: Documents in

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. We develop a model of the incentives faced by members of parliament (MPs) when deciding whether to engage in eort for their constituencies to assess the eects of their having a criminal background. Political representatives with criminal backgrounds are considered a great problem in many countries. In particular in India, a public disclosure revealed that a large proportion of politicians currently face criminal charges. This has led to a heated public debate and emerging literature assessing the causes and eects of this disturbing phenomenon. We use a comprehensive set of three proxies to meausure eort in the 14 th Lok Sabha over the 2004-2009 legislative period: attendance rates, parliamentary activity, and utilization rates of a local area development fund. We nd that MPs facing criminal accusations exhibit on average about 5% lower attendance rates and lower fund utilization rates, and less (but insignicantly) parliamentary activity. As predicted by the model, these dierences depend on the development level of the constituency, a proxy for rent-seeking possibilities and monitoring intensity. We argue and demonstrate why these negative relations should constitute an upper bound estimate of the causal eect, and show that even under conservative assumptions the eect is unlikely to be caused by unaccounted selection-bias. Terms of use: Documents in

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