Essays in political economy, migration, and public economics

Abstract

This thesis in four chapters focuses on political economy, migration, and public economics. The first chapter, joint with Vincent Pons and Clémence Tricaud, investigates the effects of campaign finance rules on electoral outcomes. In French departmental and municipal elections, candidates competing in districts above 9,000 inhabitants face spending limits and are eligible for public reimbursement. Using an RDD around the population threshold, we find that these rules increase competitiveness and benefit the runner-up of the previous race as well as new candidates, in departmental elections, while leaving the polarization and representativeness of the results unaffected. These results appear to be driven by the reimbursement of campaign expenditures, not spending limits. We do not find such effects in municipal elections, which we attribute to the use of a proportional list system instead of plurality voting. The second chapter, joint with Lars Ludolph, analyzes the effects of the migration wave from Central and Eastern European countries (AC-12) following their EU accession in 2004 on local level redistribution in England. We apply a difference-in-differences estimation strategy and find that greater migration flows led to spending on means-tested social care services to decrease in relative terms, while spending on education services increased. Our mechanisms suggest that, because of AC-12 migrants’ young age at the time of arrival, the 2004 EU enlargement alleviated some of the pressure faced by social care spending in England. We find no evidence that spending shifts are driven by a change in the local willingness to redistribute income. The third chapter investigates the effect of ideological distance between EU Commissioners for Agriculture and Regional Policy and heads of governments on the allocation of agricultural and regional funds flowing to member states. Results show that ideological distance is a strong deterrent of funds being channeled. The effects are strongest in pre-election years, for countries providing the Commissioners in charge of the given portfolios, and for countries that are single-party-ruled as opposed to coalition-ruled. These results provide first hand evidence that the behavior of European Commissioners follows similar principles to national level elected politicians and can help the debate surrounding EU reforms and the political independence of its executive body. The fourth chapter, joint with Pietro Panizza, exploits a reform in Italy that granted mayors the right to run for a third consecutive term in towns below 3,000 inhabitants. We employ a difference-indiscontinuity design and find evidence of pandering effects by mayors in both their first and second term at the time of the reform. Results differ depending on the term of the mayor reflecting the importance of the horizon of when mayors’ spending decisions pay off. We also find suggestive evidence of potential capture of first term mayors in the south of Italy.