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Candidates’ Education and Turnout: Evidence from Italian Municipal Elections

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  • Marco Alberto De Benedetto
  • Maria De Paola

Abstract

We analyze the impact that the educational level of candidates running for the position of mayor has on electoral turnout by using a large dataset for Italyn municipal elections held between 1993 and 2011. We firstly estimate a municipality fixed effects model and show that the median education of candidates standing in an election is positively correlated with turnout. To handle endogeneity issues arising from the unobservable time variant features of electoral races, we build on the literature which shows that politicians’ educational level is positively affected by their wage and apply a Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design on the basis of the fact that the wages of mayors in Italy increase non-monotonically at different thresholds. Results show that an exogenous increase in the median educational level of candidates, induced by a higher wage, leads to an increase in turnout of about 1 percentage point.
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  • Marco Alberto De Benedetto & Maria De Paola, 2017. "Candidates’ Education and Turnout: Evidence from Italian Municipal Elections," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 18(1), pages 22-50, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:germec:v:18:y:2017:i:1:p:22-50
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/geer.12084
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    Cited by:

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    2. Salvatore Capasso & Lorenzo Cicatiello & Elina De Simone & Lodovico Santoro, 2022. "Corruption and tax revenues: Evidence from Italian regions," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 93(4), pages 1129-1152, December.
    3. Ponzetto, Giacomo & Boffa, Federico & Mollisi, Vincenzo, 2023. "Do Incompetent Politicians Breed Populist Voters? Evidence from Italian Municipalities," CEPR Discussion Papers 17997, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Karel Kouba & Michael Haman, 2021. "When do voters boycott elections with participation quorums?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 189(1), pages 279-300, October.
    5. De Benedetto, Marco Alberto & De Paola, Maria, 2019. "Term limit extension and electoral participation. Evidence from a diff-in-discontinuities design at the local level in Italy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 196-211.
    6. McMurray, Joseph, 2017. "Voting as communicating: Mandates, multiple candidates, and the signaling voter's curse," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 199-223.

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