Politicians' payments in a proportional party system

摘要

Are there monetary returns to politics? This question is approached in this paper, as one of few to quantify the monetary returns to holding political office in a country with proportional representation system. I apply a difference-in-difference setting with a carefully chosen control group to rich data on candidates to the Swedish national parliament. Both shortand 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 yield positive monetary returns. In the long-run however, the effect is instead compositional in the sense that ex-politicians receive more pension income and work less. (c) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.