Paying politicians

Messner, Matthias; Polborn, Mattias

doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2004.01.004

Cited by 184 publications

(122 citation statements)

References 11 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

111

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Fortunately, this is not an issue here. On the one hand, our findings are, broadly speaking, similar to the ones in Messner and Polborn (2004) where the reward from office is private information and varies across candidates. On the other hand, letting campaigning costs be private information and vary across candidates would certainly change the findings, but the problem would then be rather uninteresting, since the voters care only about candidates' ability, not their campaigning costs.…”

Section: Fig 3 Good and Bad Candidatessupporting

confidence: 84%

“…The closest papers to ours are Caselli and Morelli (2004), Messner andPolborn (2004), andBesley (2004) who also study the candidate quality in the citizen-candidate framework and emphasize the payoff from winning an election and the opportunity cost of candidacy in determining the quality of politicians. 3 There is, however, a number of differences between our work and theirs.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…3 There is, however, a number of differences between our work and theirs. For example, Caselli and Morelli (2004) assume that candidates know in advance whether they can convince the electorate of their quality and Messner and Polborn (2004) assume that the abilities of potential candidates are known to voters, but their opportunity costs are private information. Besley (2004) focuses on the agency problem of incumbents subject to a two-period limit, assuming a random selection of politicians and abstracting from campaigning costs.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Candidate quality

Poutvaara

Takalo

2007

Int Tax Public Finan

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We analyze the topical question of how the compensation of elected politicians affects the set of citizens choosing to run. To this end, we develop a sparse and tractable citizen-candidate model of representative democracy with ability differences, informative campaigning and political parties. Our results suggest that primaries, campaign costs and rewards have previously overlooked interactions that should be studied in a unified framework. Surprisingly, increasing the reward may lower the average candidate quality when the campaigning costs are sufficiently high. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2007Politicians’ competence, Career concerns, Campaigning costs, Rewards for elected officials, Citizen-candidate models,

show abstract

Section: Fig 3 Good and Bad Candidatessupporting

confidence: 84%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Candidate quality

Poutvaara

Takalo

2007

Int Tax Public Finan

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These questions are of obvious practical relevance for the functioning of democracy but they have received the attention they deserve by academic (political) economists only in recent years (e.g. Besley 2006, Caselli and Morelli 2004, Messner and Polborn 2004, Diermeier, Keane and Merlo 2005, Dal Bo, Dal Bo and Di Tella 2007, Matozzi and Merlo 2007, Acemoglu, Egorov and Sonin 2011, Ferraz and Finan 2009, Galasso and Nannicini 2011, Brollo et al 2013. Studies of political selection typically investigate the determinants of the "quality" of elected politicians where quality is measured, for example, in terms of competence or honesty.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Choosing a Public-Spirited Leader. An Experimental Investigation of Political Selection

Markussen

Tyran

2017

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:In this experiment, voters select a leader who can either act in the public interest, i.e. make efficient and equitable policy choices, or act in a corrupt way, i.e. use public funds for private gain. Voters can observe candidates' pro-social behavior and their score in a cognitive ability test prior to the election, and this fact is known to candidates. Therefore, self-interested candidates have incentives to act in a pro-social manner, i.e. to pretend to be public-spirited leaders. We find that both truly pro-social and egoistic leaders co-exist, but that political selection is ineffective in choosing public-spirited leaders. The main reason is that egoistic candidates strategically pretend to be pro-social to increase their chances of winning the election.

show abstract

“…These models offer an explanation for why political leaders and presidents often have rather low qualifications or are of low quality. Such models typically follow either the politicalagency framework or the citizen-candidate approach (see, among many others, Caselli and Morelli (2004), Messner and Polborn (2004), Mattozzi and Merlo (2007)). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competitive careers as a way to mediocracy

Kräkel

2012

European Journal of Political Economy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We show that in competitive careers based on individual performance the least productive individuals may have the highest probabilities to be promoted to top positions. These individuals have the lowest fall-back positions and, hence, the highest incentives to succeed in career contests. This detrimental incentive effect exists irrespective of whether effort and talent are substitutes or complements in the underlying contest-success function. However, in case of complements the incentive effect may be be outweighed by a productivity effect that favors high effort choices by the more talented individuals.

show abstract

Paying politicians

Cited by 184 publications

References 11 publications

Candidate quality

Candidate quality

Choosing a Public-Spirited Leader. An Experimental Investigation of Political Selection

Competitive careers as a way to mediocracy

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About