Political salaries,electoral selection and the incumbency advantage: Evidence from a wage reform |
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Institution: | 1. Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M), Department of Economics, c\\ Madrid 126, 28903 Getafe (Madrid), Spain;2. Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education – Economics Institute (CERGE-EI), a joint workplace of Charles University in Prague and the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Politických vězň? 7, 111 21 Prague, Czech Republic |
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Abstract: | Incumbents tend to gain solid electoral advantage in many voting systems. In this study, we examine the relationship between salaries prescribed to politicians and the incumbency advantage by exploiting a political wage reform and data from close elections in a proportional semi-open list system in the Czech Republic. We show that higher salaries reduce the average incumbency advantage, as they increase the probability to run again for previously non-elected candidates much more than for incumbents. Still, we find that higher wages improve candidate selection, especially by encouraging repeated candidacy from university-educated incumbents. Higher wages also improve relative positions of re-running incumbents on candidate lists compared to previously non-elected re-running candidates. Our results overall suggest that incumbency per se changes the relationship between political wages and candidate selection. |
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