Political salaries, electoral selection and the incumbency advantage: Evidence from a wage reform
利用捷克共和国一项政治工资改革和接近选举的数据，研究发现更高的薪酬降低了平均在位优势，因为非在任候选人更可能再次参选，但高薪也改善了候选人选择，尤其是鼓励高学历在任者连任。
Incumbents tend to gain solid electoral advantage in many voting systems. In this study, we examine the relationship between salaries prescribed to politicians and the incumbency advantage by exploiting a political wage reform and data from close elections in a proportional semi-open list system in the Czech Republic. We show that higher salaries reduce the average incumbency advantage, as they increase the probability to run again for previously non-elected candidates much more than for incumbents. Still, we find that higher wages improve candidate selection, especially by encouraging repeated candidacy from university-educated incumbents. Higher wages also improve relative positions of re-running incumbents on candidate lists compared to previously non-elected re-running candidates. Our results overall suggest that incumbency per se changes the relationship between political wages and candidate selection.