Labor supply of politicians

Description

"We examine the labor supply of politicians using data on Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). We exploit the introduction of a law that equalized MEPs' salaries, which had previously differed by as much as a factor of ten. Doubling an MEP's salary increases the probability of running for reelection by 23 percentage points and increases the logarithm of the number of parties that field a candidate by 29 percent of a standard deviation. A salary increase has no discernible impact on absenteeism or shirking from legislative sessions; in contrast, non-pecuniary motives, proxied by home-country corruption, substantially impact the intensive margin of labor supply. Finally, an increase in salary lowers the quality of elected MEPs, measured by the selectivity of their undergraduate institutions"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.

Subjects

Series Statement

• NBER working paper series -- working paper 17726
• Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) -- working paper no. 17726.

Links

• http://www.nber.org/papers/w17726