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Candidate Quality

Author

Listed:
  • Panu Poutvaara

    (Centre for Economic & Business Research, CESifo & IZA)

  • Tuomas Takalo

    (Bank of Finland)

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Panu Poutvaara & Tuomas Takalo, 2004. "Candidate Quality," Public Economics 0406009, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwppe:0406009
    Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 34. First version: May 2000
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Politicians' competence; Career concerns; Campaigning costs; Rewards for elected officials; Citizen-candidate models;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D79 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Other
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J4 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets

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