Q2. What have the authors stated for future works in "Pay for politicians and candidate selection: an empirical analysis" ?
Their results suggest that it is important to study separately how male and female politicians react to economic incentives. The authors hope that their study serves as an inspiration for future research examining the effects of pay for politicians on the set of political candidates in other countries. Importantly, the effect of changes in the pay for elected politicians may be non-monotonic and depend on the starting level of politicians ’ salaries relative to outside earnings of potential candidates.
Q3. What is the definition of representative democracy?
Representative democracy can be regarded as a principal-agent relationship where voters delegate political power to selected candidates.
Q4. How can the authors analyze selection into politics?
Selection into politics can be analyzed using the citizen-candidate models of representative democracy, pioneered by Osborne and Slivinski (1996) and Besley and Coate (1997).
Q5. What is the advantage of using education as a proxy for skill?
From the point of view of viewing education as a proxy for skill, the Finnish system has the advantage that higher education is free of charge for the students, and therefore access to higher education is less likely to be affected by financial considerations (and more likely based on applicants’ ability).
Q6. What is the reason why politicians’ salaries might not have large effects on the skill level of candidates?
One further reason why politicians’ salaries might not have large effects on the skill level of candidates is that a significant proportion of the impact on life-time earnings of serving as an MP may come from increased earnings once returning to a civil career after one’s career in politics.
Q7. What is the effect of increasing salaries on the ability of citizens?
Increasing salaries attracts more able candidates when the initial salaries are low, and this may also result in lower-ability citizens leaving politics as the competition gets tougher and their electoral chances get worse.
Q8. What was the proposal to increase the attractiveness of serving as an MP?
Shortly after the 1999 parliamentary election, a proposal was made to increase the attractiveness of serving as an MP by increasing the salary of parliamentarians.
Q9. How does the fraction of candidates with university education change in the country?
Over the three municipal elections covered by their data, the fraction of those with university-level education increases monotonically from 9.5 percent to 12.3 percent in the whole country.