Private Returns to Public Office

Fisman, Raymond; Schulz, Florian; Vig, Vikrant

doi:10.3386/w18095

Cited by 64 publications

(115 citation statements)

References 18 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…An alternative explanation within our model framework, which is supported by anecdotal evidence, is that part of an MP's utility can come from rent extraction (cf. Fisman et al, 2014 andKapur andVaishnav, 2011). If more developed constituencies oer better rent-seeking opportunities for criminal MPs, this increases their utility from re-election, and can also narrow the eort gap between criminal and non-criminal types as criminal types strive to maintain access to this resource.…”

Section: Parliamentary Work 5 Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, it has been widely used in the literature, for example in Gagliarducci et al (2010Gagliarducci et al ( , 2011 and Besley and Larcinese (2011). Mocan and Altindag (2013) and Fisman et al (2014) use it as their main measure of eort in studies on MPs in the European parliament. To avoid confusion, note that some papers use the absenteeism rate instead, which is of course simply the inverse of our measure.…”

Section: Dependent Variables: I) Attendance Rates and Parliamentary Amentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Fisman et al (2014), Ferraz andFinan (2011), andSnyder andStrömberg (2010) examine political competition, media coverage and rent seeking behavior of incumbent politicians. More closely related to this paper, Aidt et al (2015) …”

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Crime, Incentives and Political Effort: A Model and Empirical Application for India

2015

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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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Section: Parliamentary Work 5 Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Dependent Variables: I) Attendance Rates and Parliamentary Amentioning

confidence: 99%

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Crime, Incentives and Political Effort: A Model and Empirical Application for India

2015

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“…The average declared wealth of re-contesting candidates (for elections to the Parliament and state legislative assemblies) in 2004 was 134 percent higher than their wealth during the first election (Sastry (2014)) suggesting high political rents and significant corruption. Fisman et al (2014) show that the annual asset growth of winners in state elections is 3-5 p.p. higher than that of runners-up.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Democracy and Demography

Anukriti

Chakravarty

2017

J. Human Resources

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We investigate whether restricting elected leadership positions to candidates with "desirable" characteristics leads to society-wide adoption of those characteristics in a lowincome democracy with high political participation. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation in fertility limits imposed on village council members in India to curb population growth, we find that rural couples significantly decreased fertility in response. Socially disadvantaged families exhibit the greatest reduction in marginal fertility immediately following the passage of these limits, but the decline in the long-run "stock" of children is more evenly spread across socioeconomic groups. The limits however also increased the already male-biased sex ratio at birth in castes with strong son preference. Therefore, while restricting access to elected office may aid in achieving social objectives, it can also worsen inequality.JEL Codes: J13, J16, H75, O11

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“…Political cycles may be influenced by term limits (Klein andSakurai 2015, Dalle Nogare and and globalization (Efthyvoulou 2011). 4 A political office may also give rise to private returns (Eggers and Hainmueller 2009, Querubin and Snyder 2013, Fisman et al 2014, Kotakorpi et al 2015. When politicians earn these private returns during an official political term, returns may influence parliamentary effort (Gagliarducci et al 2010, Arnold et al 2014, Geys andMause in press).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%