Do newly elected mayors cut their own pay?
利用2023年西班牙市政选举数据，发现新当选的市长若来自不同意识形态阵营，上任后会主动减薪，幅度约为法定最高薪酬的6到13个百分点，而同一阵营的继任者则无此调整。
Using data from the 2023 Spanish municipal elections, we show that newly elected mayors who replace incumbents from a different ideological bloc reduce their own pay upon taking office — by about 6 and 13 percentage points of the legal maximum in left-to-right and right-to-left turnovers, respectively — relative to reelected incumbents. No such adjustment occurs when the incoming mayor shares the predecessor’s ideological orientation. The pattern of results is consistent with a costly-signaling mechanism in which ideological outsiders use early pay cuts to credibly convey otherwise hard-to-observe attributes. More broadly, the findings suggest a previously unexplored way in which electoral turnover may shape local political behavior.