Party membership and public sector employment in Brazil

• Grant number: 18/09803-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: September 01, 2018
• End date: February 29, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Economics
• Principal Investigator: Fabiana Fontes Rocha
• Grantee: Pedro Henrique Thibes Forquesato
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade (FEA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Together with Fernanda Brollo and Juan Carlos Gozzi, from the University of Warwick, we analyze how political discretion affects the selection of government workers, using individual-level data on political party membership and matched employer-employee data on the universe of formal workers in Brazil. We use a regression discontinuity design on close elections to estimate the causal effect of a mayor winning election on the employment ofmembers of the mayor's coalition parties in the municipal bureaucracy. We also investigate the occupations on which these hired party members are employed, and whether they have different observable quality (e.g., education) than other public employees. (AU)