TY  - JOUR
AU  - Brollo,Fernanda
AU  - Nannicini,Tommaso
AU  - Perotti,Roberto
AU  - Tabellini,Guido
TI  - The Political Resource Curse
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15705
PY  - 2010
Y2  - January 2010
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15705
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15705.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Fernanda Brollo
University of Alicante
E-Mail: fernanda.brollo@unibocconi.it

Tommaso Nannicini
IGIER Universita' Bocconi
Via Roentgen 1
20136 Milano
Italy
E-Mail: tommaso.nannicini@unibocconi.it

Roberto Perotti
IGIER Universita' Bocconi
Via Roentgen 1
20136 Milano
ITALY
Tel: 39 02 58363073
Fax: 39 02 58363302
E-Mail: roberto.perotti@unibocconi.it

Guido Tabellini
IGIER Universita' Bocconi
Via Roentgen 1
20136 Milano
Italy
Tel: 39 2 583 6 3305; fax 3302
E-Mail: guido.tabellini@unibocconi.it
AB  - The paper studies the effect of additional government revenues on political corruption and on the quality of politicians, both with theory and data. The theory is based on a version of the career concerns model of political agency with endogenous entry of political candidates. The evidence refers to municipalities in Brazil, where federal transfers to municipal governments change exogenously according to given population thresholds. We exploit a regression discontinuity design to test the implications of the theory and identify the causal effect of larger federal transfers on political corruption and the observed features of political candidates at the municipal level. In accordance with the predictions of the theory, we find that larger transfers increase political corruption and reduce the quality of candidates for mayor.
ER  -