Journal ArticleDOI
Who seeks reelection: local fiscal restraints and political selection
TLDR
The authors analyzes the consequences of local fiscal autonomy with respect to political selection and proposes a model of political careers, where the decisions to become candidates and to seek reelection are both endogenous.Abstract:
This paper analyzes the consequences of local fiscal autonomy with respect to political selection. We propose a model of political careers wherein the decisions to become candidates and to seek reelection are both endogenous. Private-sector aptitude and political ability are private information; the latter is revealed to the incumbent during her first period in office. We show that, following an unanticipated reduction in the returns from holding office, incumbents with high market ability are more likely to refrain from running for office again than their lower-ability counterparts. We test that prediction using an unexpected reduction in the upper bound of the municipal property tax rate, announced by Portugal’s prime minister in July 2008, just 15 months before the local elections. We rely on a comprehensive data set for all Portuguese mainland municipalities for the 2005 and 2009 elections, including the characteristics of the municipalities and individual mayors. We employ a difference-in-differences strategy to show that affected mayors—those who were forced to reduce the property tax rate, and thus faced a sharp tax revenue decline—are less likely to seek reelection. This effect is driven by high-professional-status incumbents.read more
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Who Becomes a Politician
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined patterns of political selection among the universe of municipal politicians and national legislators in Sweden, using extraordinarily rich data on competence traits and social background for the entire population.
Journal ArticleDOI
Fiscal Rules and the Selection of Politicians: Evidence from Italian Municipalities
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used data from Italian municipalities to study how fiscal rules affect the selection of politicians and found that reducing policymaking discretion may alleviate inter-jurisdictional externalities, but it may also lower the quality of the political class.
Journal ArticleDOI
Collateral Value and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from a Property Tax Reform
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors study the role of property taxes on entrepreneurial activity using a quasi-natural experiment, which unexpectedly reduced the upper bound of the Portuguese property tax rate for urban properties in 2008.
Posted Content
Collateral Value and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from a Property Tax Reform
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors study the role of property taxes on entrepreneurial activity using a quasi-natural experiment, which unexpectedly reduced the upper bound of the Portuguese property tax rate for urban properties in 2008.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?
TL;DR: In this article, the authors randomly generate placebo laws in state-level data on female wages from the Current Population Survey and use OLS to compute the DD estimate of its "effect" as well as the standard error of this estimate.
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Selection on Observed and Unobserved Variables: Assessing the Effectiveness of Catholic Schools
TL;DR: In this article, the authors developed estimation methods that use the amount of selection on the observables in a model as a guide to the amount that should be selected on the unobservables in order to identify the effect of the endogenous variable.
Journal ArticleDOI
Selection on Observed and Unobserved Variables: Assessing the Effectiveness of Catholic Schools
TL;DR: In this article, the authors measure the effect of Catholic high school attendance on educational attainment and test scores, and find that Catholic high schools substantially increase the probability of graduating from high school and, more tentatively, attending college.
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The causal effect of education on earnings
TL;DR: This paper surveys the recent literature on the causal relationship between education and earnings and concludes that the average (or average marginal) return to education is not much below the estimate that emerges from a standard human capital earnings function fit by OLS.
Journal ArticleDOI
Presidential Popularity from Truman to Johnson
TL;DR: In this article, four variables are used as predictors of a President's popularity: length of time in office, international events, economic slump, and war, and the number of voters who approve or disapprove of the way the incumbent is handling his job as president.
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