Politicians' Outside Earnings and Electoral Competition

Becker, Johannes; Peichl, Andreas und Rincke, Johannes (12. März 2008): Politicians' Outside Earnings and Electoral Competition. Münchener Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Beiträge (VWL) 2008-6

Abstract

This paper deals with the impact of electoral competition on politicians' outside earnings. We propose a simple theoretical model with politicians facing a tradeoff between allocating their time to political effort or to an alternative use generating outside earnings. The model has a testable implication stating that the amount of time spent on outside work is negatively related to the degree of electoral competition. We test this implication using a new dataset on outside earnings of members of the German federal assembly. Taking into account the potential endogeneity of measures of political competition that depend on past election outcomes, we find that politicians facing low competition have substantially higher outside earnings.

• Dokumententyp: Paper
• Publikationsform: Submitted Version
• Keywords: Outside earnings; Electoral competition
• Fakultät: Volkswirtschaft ; Volkswirtschaft > Munich Discussion Papers in Economics ; Volkswirtschaft > Munich Discussion Papers in Economics > Neue politische Ökonomie
• Themengebiete: 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 300 Sozialwissenschaft, Soziologie ; 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 330 Wirtschaft
• JEL Classification: D72, J22, J45
• Sprache: Englisch