Essays in political economy

Abstract

This dissertation explores two topics in political economy. In the first chapter, we investigate whether dynastic mayors are more or less likely to engage in corruption when compared to non-dynastic mayors. Using data from random government audits conducted in the Brazilian municipalities, we use RDD on close elections to compare municipalities that barely had a dynastic candidate elected as mayor to those that did not. The identification of relatives in politics is based on the matching of their last names. We find that dynastic mayors are more likely to engage in practices of over-invoicing compared to non-dynastic mayors. In the second chapter, we investigate the relationship between political competition and the quality of the candidates, as well as the elected politicians. We use the effective number of candidates for measuring electoral competition, and the level of education for measuring the quality of politicians. By employing an instrumental variable approach, we find that electoral competition improves the quality of the candidates and the elected politicians. At the same time, it decreases the participation and the performance of women in politics.