Do politicians shirk when reelection is certain? Evidence from the German parliament

Bernecker, Andreas

doi:10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2014.07.001

Cited by 34 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…This result informs and validates existing studies (Bernecker, 2013;Besley and Larcinese, 2011;Fisman, Harmon, Kamenica, and Munk, 2012;Gagliar-ducci, Nannicini, and Naticchioni, 2010) that employ only attendance rates as a proxy for parliamentary effort. By demonstrating that outcomes for other activities in parliament are similar to attendance rate results, I show that studies relying exclusively on attendance rates do not make a mistake.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 74%

“…Second, I use additional measures of parliamentary effort that have not been looked at so far. My findings therefore validate and complement other studies (Bernecker, 2013;Besley and Larcinese, 2011;Fisman, Harmon, Kamenica, and Munk, 2012;Gagliarducci, Nannicini, and Naticchioni, 2010) that exclusively employ attendance rates to proxy for shirking in parliament. Third, I introduce new measures that allow me to control for unobserved legislator ability by making use of special institutional features of the German electoral system.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 74%

“…I also introduced some new measures to proxy for legislator ability that make use of special institutional features of the German electoral system. Furthermore, I validate and complement existing research (Bernecker, 2013;Besley and Larcinese, 2011;Fisman, Harmon, Kamenica, and Munk, 2012;Gagliarducci, Nannicini, and Naticchioni, 2010) Another limitation of my approach is that I do not link specific outside activities to specific behaviors in parliament. For example, one could screen the contents of speeches or bills brought forward by individual deputies and look if there is any connection to the agenda of outside employers.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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German MPs' Outside Jobs and Their Repercussions on Parliamentary Effort

Arnold

2013

SSRN Journal

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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. Abstract It is a longstanding debate whether members of parliament (MPs) should be allowed to follow sideline jobs in addition to their mandate. Critics claim that politicians already face binding time constraints and that moonlighting might lead to a neglect of inner-parliamentary duties. The purpose of this study is therefore to investigate whether politicians with more sideline jobs show less effort inside parliament. To address this question, I collected novel data on German members of parliament from 2009-2013. Using a selection on observables approach that controls for legislator ability, I find that higher outside earnings are associated with a significantly lower attendance rate as well as fewer speeches, oral contributions, interpellations and group initiatives. These results are robust to a variety of tests. My findings suggest that time caps on moonlighting along with stricter disclosure rules for outside activities might be necessary. Terms of use: Documents in

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 74%

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 74%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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German MPs' Outside Jobs and Their Repercussions on Parliamentary Effort

Arnold

2013

SSRN Journal

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“…Having a zero output is hence unambiguously an indicator of bad performance. Contrary to papers focusing on vote attendance or absenteeism (for instance Bernecker, 2014;Galasso and Nannicini, 2011;Gagliarducci et al, 2010), it focuses on what deputies actually do (or do not), on what is effort and competence demanding. The time structure of the dataset and the evolution of ghost deputies over time is provided in Table 2.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Who are the ‘ghost’ MPs? Evidence from the French parliament

Gavoille

2018

European Journal of Political Economy

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This paper studies the characteristics of the ghost deputies of the French National Assembly, i.e. deputies who do not have any official recorded activity over a whole year. Using a rich dataset providing various information about all deputies from 1959 to 2012, the results indicate that the typical ghost deputy is an old man with a low level of schooling, member of a large party which does not support the government and who is elected in jurisdiction with a low level of political competition. However, personal characteristics are less and less correlated with performance over the years. Finally, ghost deputies face more difficulties to achieve reelection, but are penalized only at the first round, voters exclusively considering national factors at the second round.

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“…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).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Parties Punish MPs for Voting Against the Party Line?

Kauder

Potrafke

Riem

2017

CESifo Economic Studies

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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 examine whether parties punish politicians who vote against the party line in roll-call votes. Using data of German members of parliament over the legislative period 2009-2013, we take into account that the effect of punishment differs along the list of candidates because a candidate is punished more when he loses positions at the threshold of promising list positions. The dataset includes the voting behavior of 257 MPs in 218 roll-call votes. Our results do not show that parties account for the voting behavior by punishing politicians who have voted against the party line. Political parties may attract different groups of voters by tolerating politicians who vote according to their own credo. Qualities other than the voting behavior seem to matter to political parties when nominating candidates. JEL-Codes: D720, D780, P160. Terms of use: Documents in

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Do politicians shirk when reelection is certain? Evidence from the German parliament

Cited by 34 publications

References 36 publications

German MPs' Outside Jobs and Their Repercussions on Parliamentary Effort

German MPs' Outside Jobs and Their Repercussions on Parliamentary Effort

Who are the ‘ghost’ MPs? Evidence from the French parliament

Do Parties Punish MPs for Voting Against the Party Line?

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