Old and Young Politicians

Abstract

We evaluate the effect of a politician's age on political governance, reelection rates, and policies using data on Italian local governments. Our results suggest that younger politicians are more likely to behave strategically in response to election incentives: they increase spending and obtain more transfers from higher levels of government in preelection years. We argue that is a sign of stronger career concerns incentives.The results are robust to adopting three different identification strategies: fixed-effects regression, standard regression discontinuity design, and an augmented regression discontinuity design that controls for residual heterogeneity.JEL codes: C21, D78, H72, H77, J18.

Political business cycles 40 years after Nordhaus

“…Brollo and Troiano (2013) find that, when elections are approaching, even if there is no gender difference in transfers and health care services, male mayors hire relatively more temporary public employees than female mayors. Alesina et al (2015) show that younger politicians are more likely to increase expenditures in pre-election years. We can note that these personal characteristics may also have an indirect impact on PBCs by influencing the probability of reelection and therefore the incentives to generate PBCs.…”

“…Fourth, the personal characteristics of candidates can alter the shape of the PBC. The first insights are given by Brollo and Troiano (2013) and Alesina et al (2015). Brollo and Troiano (2013) find that, when elections are approaching, even if there is no gender difference in transfers and health care services, male mayors hire relatively more temporary public employees than female mayors.…”

Politicians, Bureaucrats, and Development: Evidence from India

“…We begin by presenting microlevel causal evidence that political incentives shape the implementation of a key large-scale development program. Unpacking the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats is ordinarily hard because well-performing politicians might be different on several important dimensions like experience (Alesina, Troiano, and Cassidy 2015; Ferraz and Finan 2011a) and motivation (Ferraz and Finan 2011b). As a result, many studies identify changes in political incentives by studying differences between politicians, such as political affiliation or by using term limits (Alt, Bueno de Mesquita, and Rose 2011; Besley and Case 1995; Callen et al 2014; Nath 2015).…”

The Local Political Economy Effects of School Construction in Indonesia

“…Age and Gender of the Village Head.-There is a large literature on the effects of gender of politicians on policy outcomes (see for instance Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004and Clots-Figueras 2011, 2012) and a recent literature on the effects of the age of politicians (Alesina, Troiano, and Cassidy 2015). In order to explore the relevance of these characteristics in the Indonesian local context, I estimate the baseline econometric specification when the dependent variable is the age of the village head or a dummy for whether the village head is male.…”