Essays in political selection and politicians' behavior

I study some economic and institutional drivers of the quality and behaviour of elected politicians. In the first chapter, using a unique database on local politicians in Italian municipalities between 1985 and 1992, I implement a RD analysis to evaluate the causal effect of a wage increase on the characteristics of politicians in local parliamentary systems. I find that higher expected wages attract more educated member of the local council but this positive selection effect actually results in a less educated council-elected mayor. These results are confirmed by other measure of skills (educational attainment and previous occupations). In the second chapter, using the same database, I take advantage of a double discontinuity to identify the causal effect of the switch from single-party to coalition governments. I exploit an identification strategy based on the difference in discontinuities and I highlight an increase in the quality of the elected mayor in term of years of schooling and previous job. Finally, in the third chapter, using Italian MPs micro-data, I study some economic determinants of party discipline. In particular, I study the MPs’ behaviour during the XVI, XVII and XVIII legislature focusing on their rebellion rate (i.e. their propensity to vote against their party line) and absenteeism rare by using different estimation methods (OLS, Fractional Logit, Poisson). Our results show that outside income is positive correlated with absences and negative correlated with rebel votes.