Do Politicians' Relatives Get Better Jobs? Evidence from Municipal Elections [May 2015]

We estimate the impacts of being connected to politicians on occupational choice. We use an administrative dataset collected in 2008-2010 on 20 million individuals and rely on naming conventions to assess family links to candidates in elections held in 2007 and 2010. We first apply a regression discontinuity design to close elections in 2007. We then use individuals connected to successful candidates in 2010 as control group to net out the possible cost associated with being related to a losing candidate. We find that relatives of current office-holders are more likely to be employed in better paying occupations.