We present a simple theory of the quality (competence and honesty) of elected officials. Our theory offers four main insights. Low-quality citizens have a 'comparative advantage' in pursuing elective office, because their market wages are lower than those of high-quality citizens (competence), and/or because they reap higher returns from holding office (honesty). Hence, voters may find themselves supply constrained of high-quality candidates. Second, bad politicians generate negative externalities for good ones, making their rewards from office increasing in the average quality of office holders. This leads to multiple equilibria in quality. Third, incumbent policymakers can influence the rewards of future policymakers, leading to path dependence in quality: bad governments saw the seeds for more bad governments. Fourth, quality-constrained voters look for the optimal mix of honesty and ability, and this may lead to a negative correlation between these two qualities across political entities.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
8532.
Length: Date of creation: Oct 2001 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8532
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silane & Andrei Shleifer & Robert Vishny, 1998.
"The Quality of Goverment,"
NBER Working Papers
6727, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Alesina, Alberto & Rosenthal, Howard, 1996.
"A Theory of Divided Government,"
Econometrica,
Econometric Society, vol. 64(6), pages 1311-41, November.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1993.
"Corruption,"
The Quarterly Journal of Economics,
MIT Press, vol. 108(3), pages 599-617, August.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1993.
"Corruption,"
NBER Working Papers
4372, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
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