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Politicians' Payments in a Proportional Party System

Author

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  • Heléne Berg
Abstract
Is politics a lucrative business? The question is approached in this paper, as one of few to quantify the monetary returns to holding political office in a typical developed democracy where parties are the main political actors. By applying a difference-in-difference setting with a carefully chosen control group to rich data on candidates to the Swedish national parliament, both short and long-run effects of being elected on different types of income are estimated. Results show that, yes, mostly thanks to relatively high remuneration while still in office, politics can be a lucrative business. In the long-run however, the effect is instead compositional in the sense that ex-politicians receive more pension income and work less.

Suggested Citation

  • Heléne Berg, 2018. "Politicians' Payments in a Proportional Party System," CESifo Working Paper Series 7278, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7278
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    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp7278.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Berg, Heléne, 2018. "Is It Worth It? On the Returns to Holding Political Office," Research Papers in Economics 2018:5, Stockholm University, Department of Economics.
    2. Heléne Berg, 2018. "Is It Worth It? On the Returns to Holding Political Office," CESifo Working Paper Series 7406, CESifo.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    returns to politics; difference-in-difference;

    JEL classification:

    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • J44 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Professional Labor Markets and Occupations

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