Job Market Paper
Job Market Paper
Developers or Disruptors ? Politicians' Occupation and Municipal Performance
The quality of elected governments is a key determinant of long-term economic growth. This paper studies, theoretically and empirically, how politicians with occupations closely linked (proximate) to public expenditures influence municipal economic performance. Although such politicians may be more effective due to their expertise, they may also be better positioned to extract illegal rents. To explore these dynamics, I develop a theoretical framework where candidate occupation and the prosecution system play central roles in elections. The model generates two predictions, tested using Italian municipal data. Consistently with the theoretical model, I find that proximate mayors negatively affect municipal economic performance and are associated with more non-transparent practices. I also show that stricter anti-corruption policies reduce illegal rent extraction and improve municipal outcomes. These findings underscore the importance of legal and institutional frameworks in aligning political incentives with the public interest.
Ballots and Progress: Political Inclusion and Development in 19th-Century France with Jérémy Laurent-Lucchetti, Mara Squicciarini and Nico Voigtländer
This paper examines the socio-economic effects of franchise expansion in 19th-century France. We exploit a sharp kink in the 1831 municipal voting law, which generated a discontinuous drop in the share of enfranchised adult males at the 300-inhabitant threshold. Using a regression-kink design, we show that broader suffrage increased investment in public goods, particularly in primary education, through lower school fees, improved instructional materials, and reduced corporal violence by teachers. Municipalities with higher franchise shares subsequently exhibited faster human-capital accumulation, greater civic engagement, and higher innovation, as captured by literacy growth, newspaper circulation, patenting, and the emergence of notable individuals. These places also experienced stronger population growth, rising real-estate values, and improvements in property-rights institutions. On the other hand, franchise expansion had no effect on riots. Our results align with theories emphasizing public-good provision as the key motive for extending the franchise, rather than mitigating revolutionary threats. Using newly digitized voting lists, we also show that enfranchisement broadened the electorate toward lower-income workers.