[en] We study the relationship between the composition of the political class and the size of government. First, we use a citizen-candidate model to show that the extension of suffrage is inconsequential for government spending when stricter eligibility requirements are in place. The removal of eligibility requirements, on the other hand, leads to the election of less wealthy politicians and the enactment of more redistributive policies. We test these predictions empirically using data from the 13 U.S. original states. We find no robust correlation between the extension of the franchise and government spending or the composition of the political class. However, the subsequent elimination of eligibility restrictions is associated with an increase in government spending and the election of state senators with a less elite background.
Disciplines :
Finance
Author, co-author :
Corvalan, Alejandro ✱; Universidad Diego Portales, Chile
Querubín, Pablo ✱; New York University, United States
VICENTE, Sergio ✱; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance (FDEF) > Department of Finance (DF) ; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom
✱ These authors have contributed equally to this work.
Acknowledgments: We thank Felipe Balcázar, Antonella Bandiera, Pedro Rodríguez, Mateo Uribe, Alessandro Vecchiato, Waldo Vila and Richell Wee for outstanding research assistance. Scott Ashworth, Filipe Campante, Pedro Dal Bo, Emilio Depetris-Chauvin, Elena Esposito, Garance Genicot, Bill Easterly, Jeff Frieden, Sebastian Lavezzolo, Antoine Loeper, Suresh Naidu, Ken Shepsle, David Stasavage and Stephane Wolton provided very valuable feedback. Joe Ferrie kindly gave us access to the full count file of the 1850 Population Census. We also thank participants at BI Norwegian Business School, CEU, EH Clio Lab, ITAM, LACEA 2015, LM University Munich, Stanford GSB, the Columbia PE Conference, the Barcelona Summer Forum, the 2016 Formal Theory and Comparative Politics Conference, LSE-Stanford-Los Andes Conference 2018, University of Wisconsin, University of Toronto, the 2017 Washington PECO Conference and the Workshop of Political Economy and Political Science (CEA, Universidad de Chile) for their comments. Corvalan acknowledges financial support from the Institute for Research in Market Imperfections and Public Policy, ICM IS130002, Ministerio de Economía, Fomento y Turismo, and from the Chilean National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research Conicyt, project Fondecyt 1161719. Vicente acknowledges financial support from Fundación Ramón Areces, Fundación UCEIF-SANFI and Banco de España, and from FEDER (UNC315-EE-3636). E-mail: corvalan.tmp@gmail.com (Corvalan); pablo.querubin@nyu.edu (Querubín); svicenter@gmail.com (Vicente)
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