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Is It Worth It? On the Returns to Holding Political Office

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  • Heléne Berg

Abstract

This paper estimate causal effects of being elected in a local election on monetary returns. The claim for causality can be made thanks to a research design where the income of some candidate who just barely won a seat is compared to that of some other candidate who was close to winning a seat for the same party, but ultimately did not. The design is made possible thanks to comprehensive data covering all political candidates in the period 1991{2006. I establish that monetary returns are absent both in the short and long run. Instead, politicians seem to be motivated by non-monetary returns, and I show that being elected locally once can be an effective starting point for enjoying such payoffs.

Suggested Citation

  • Heléne Berg, 2018. "Is It Worth It? On the Returns to Holding Political Office," CESifo Working Paper Series 7406, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7406
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    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp7406.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Bose, Paul, 2021. "Political (self-)selection and competition: Evidence from U.S. Congressional elections," VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics 242377, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    returns to politics; incumbency effects; regression discontinuity design;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • J44 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Professional Labor Markets and Occupations

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