Crime, Incentives and Political Effort: A Model and Empirical Application for India

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. We develop a model of the incentives faced by members of parliament (MPs) when deciding whether to engage in eort for their constituencies to assess the eects of their having a criminal background. Political representatives with criminal backgrounds are considered a great problem in many countries. In particular in India, a public disclosure revealed that a large proportion of politicians currently face criminal charges. This has led to a heated public debate and emerging literature assessing the causes and eects of this disturbing phenomenon. We use a comprehensive set of three proxies to meausure eort in the 14 th Lok Sabha over the 2004-2009 legislative period: attendance rates, parliamentary activity, and utilization rates of a local area development fund. We nd that MPs facing criminal accusations exhibit on average about 5% lower attendance rates and lower fund utilization rates, and less (but insignicantly) parliamentary activity. As predicted by the model, these dierences depend on the development level of the constituency, a proxy for rent-seeking possibilities and monitoring intensity. We argue and demonstrate why these negative relations should constitute an upper bound estimate of the causal eect, and show that even under conservative assumptions the eect is unlikely to be caused by unaccounted selection-bias. Terms of use: Documents in

Supermajorities and Political Rent Extraction

“…Campbell and Cowley (2015) portray attitudes to moonlighting politicians in the United Kingdom. On political effort of criminal MPs, see Gehring et al (2015).…”

Conservative Politicians and Voting on Same-sex Marriage

“…Scholars examine how electoral competition influences politicians' activities in parliament and outside earnings (Becker et al, 2009;Bernecker, 2014;Gavoille and Verschelde, 2017). On politicians' activities and attendance in parliament, see Arnold et al (2014), Gehring et al (2015), Geys (2015), and Fedele and Naticchioni (2016). On how compensation influences the decision to run for office, see Poutvaara and Takalo (2007).…”

“…(), Gehring et al . (), Geys (), and Fedele and Naticchioni (). On how compensation influences the decision to run for office, see Poutvaara and Takalo ().…”

Do Parties Punish MPs for Voting Against the Party Line?

“…In the United Kingdom, policy accountability of MPs is relatively weak and general rather than issuespecific (Vivyan and Wagner 2012). 4 Politicians who ran in highly contested electoral districts were also more likely to attend parliamentary sessions (Bernecker 2014; on attendance rates and parliamentary activity see also Gehring et al 2015 andMause 2016). The vote margin may also influence tax policy and political rent extraction (Solé-Ollé 2003, Kauder andPotrafke 2016).…”