Paying Politicians

Messner, Matthias; Polborn, Mattias

doi:10.2139/ssrn.468480

Download This Paper

Open PDF in Browser

Add Paper to My Library

Paying Politicians

IGIER Working Paper No. 246

28 Pages Posted: 23 Dec 2003

See all articles by Matthias Messner

Mattias Polborn

Vanderbilt University - College of Arts and Science - Department of Economics; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Date Written: November 2003

Abstract

We consider a society that has to elect an official who provides a public service for the citizens. Potential candidates differ in their competence and every potential candidate has private information about his opportunity cost to perform the task of the elected official. We develop a new citizen candidate model with a unique equilibrium to analyze citizens' candidature decisions.

Under some weak additional assumptions, bad candidates run with a higher probability than good ones, and for unattractive positions, good candidates freeride on bad ones. We also analyze the comparative static effects of wage increases and cost of running on the potential candidates' entry decisions.

Keywords: Citizen-candidate model, political economy, private provision of public goods, wage for politicians

JEL Classification: D7, H0

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Messner, Matthias and Polborn, Mattias K., Paying Politicians (November 2003). IGIER Working Paper No. 246, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=468480 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.468480