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Candidates’ Education and Turnout: Evidence from Italyn Municipal Elections

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  • Benedetto Marco Alberto De

    (Birkbeck College,Londra, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)

  • Paola Maria De

    (University of Calabria, IZA,RendeCS, Italy)

Abstract

We analyze the impact that the educational level of candidates running for the position of mayor has on electoral turnout by using a large dataset for Italyn municipal elections held between 1993 and 2011. We firstly estimate a municipality fixed effects model and show that the median education of candidates standing in an election is positively correlated with turnout. To handle endogeneity issues arising from the unobservable time variant features of electoral races, we build on the literature which shows that politicians’ educational level is positively affected by their wage and apply a Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design on the basis of the fact that the wages of mayors in Italy increase non-monotonically at different thresholds. Results show that an exogenous increase in the median educational level of candidates, induced by a higher wage, leads to an increase in turnout of about 1 percentage point.

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  • Benedetto Marco Alberto De & Paola Maria De, 2017. "Candidates’ Education and Turnout: Evidence from Italyn Municipal Elections," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 18(1), pages 22-50, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:germec:v:18:y:2017:i:1:p:22-50
    DOI: 10.1111/geer.12084
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    Cited by:

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    2. Karel Kouba & Michael Haman, 2021. "When do voters boycott elections with participation quorums?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 189(1), pages 279-300, October.
    3. McMurray, Joseph, 2017. "Voting as communicating: Mandates, multiple candidates, and the signaling voter's curse," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 199-223.
    4. De Benedetto, Marco Alberto & De Paola, Maria, 2019. "Term limit extension and electoral participation. Evidence from a diff-in-discontinuities design at the local level in Italy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 196-211.
    5. Anna Harvey, 2020. "Applying regression discontinuity designs to American political development," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 185(3), pages 377-399, December.
    6. Salvatore Capasso & Lorenzo Cicatiello & Elina De Simone & Lodovico Santoro, 2022. "Corruption and tax revenues: Evidence from Italian regions," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 93(4), pages 1129-1152, December.
    7. Boffa Federico & Mollisi Vincenzo & Ponzetto A. M. Giacomo, 2024. "Do Incompetent Politicians Breed Populist Voters? Evidence from Italian Municipalities," Working papers 087, Department of Economics, Social Studies, Applied Mathematics and Statistics (Dipartimento di Scienze Economico-Sociali e Matematico-Statistiche), University of Torino.

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