Quality of Politicians and Electoral System. Evidence from a Quasi-experimental Design for Italian Cities

De Benedetto, Marco Alberto (2018): Quality of Politicians and Electoral System. Evidence from a Quasi-experimental Design for Italian Cities.

Abstract

We study the effect of the electoral system on the quality of politicians, measured by the average educational attainment, at the local level in Italy over the period 1994-2017. Since 1993, municipalities below 15,000 inhabitants vote with a single-ballot system, whereas cities above 15,000 inhabitants threshold are subject to a double ballot. Exploiting the discontinuous policy change nearby the population cut-off we have implemented a RDD and found that runoff elections lead to a decrease in the educational attainment of local politicians by about 2% compared to years of schooling of politicians in municipalities voting with a single-ballot scheme. We speculate that the negative effect is driven by the different selection process of candidates adopted by political parties between runoff and single-ballot system. Findings are similar when we use alternative measures of quality of politicians related both to the previous occupation and to previous political experience, and when we control for different measures of political closeness.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Regression discontinuity design; Electoral system; Education; Political competition.
• Subjects: C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C3 - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models ; Multiple Variables > C31 - Cross-Sectional Models ; Spatial Models ; Treatment Effect Models ; Quantile Regressions ; Social Interaction Models; D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D72 - Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education and Research Institutions > I20 - General; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J4 - Particular Labor Markets > J42 - Monopsony ; Segmented Labor Markets

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