Candidates' Quality and Electoral Participation: Evidence from Italian Municipal Elections

Arbeitspapier

We analyze the impact of the quality of candidates running for a mayor position on turnout using a large data set on Italian municipal elections held from 1993 to 2011. We firstly estimate a municipal fixed effects model and show that an increase in the average quality of candidates competing at the electoral race produces a positive impact on turnout. To handle endogeneity issues arising from time variant unobservable features of electoral races, we build on the literature showing that politicians' quality is positively affected by their wage and apply a Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design relying on the fact that in Italy the wage of the mayor increases non-monotonically at different thresholds. Results show that an exogenous increase in the average quality of candidates, induced by a higher wage, leads to an increase in turnout by about 2 percentage points.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 8102

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior ; Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation ; Public Sector Labor Markets
• Subject: politicians' quality ; turnout ; fuzzy regression discontinuity design ; instrumental variables

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): De Benedetto, Marco Alberto ; De Paola, Maria
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2014

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/96808
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET