This dissertation studies the impacts of quid pro quo relationships between politiciansand their supporters on public policy and the labor market of public servants.
Chapter 2 investigates the effects of a temporary shock in the likelihood of detecting
officeholders’ misbehavior on the composition of public expenditures and reelection rates
of incumbent politicians, taking into consideration the existence of an ongoing relationship
between lawmakers and campaign contributors. This shock derives from an experiment
developed by Zamboni and Litschig (2018) that temporarily and randomly increased the
likelihood of selection of Brazilian municipalities into a preexisting audit program against
corruption. I document a reduction in the probability that treated municipalities engaged in
construction projects during the experiment, with a partial reversal in the reelection year, as
the audit risk returned to its baseline mark. I report that the threat of audit mostly impacted
the actions of politicians in locations with previous experience in the anti-coruption program
and where mayors had close relationships with historically corrupt campaign donors, such
as construction companies. Moreover, I estimate a large contraction in the likelihood of
contribution from these donors to the reelection campaigns of treated mayors and a sizeable
reduction in their reelection rates.
Chapter 3, co-authored with Thiago Scot, analyzes the effects of a change in power at the
local level on the employment of health care workers in Brazil. It compares municipalities
where the incumbent party barely won a bid for reelection with those where the incumbent
party barely lost, in order to estimate the effects of political turnover on the labor market
for public servants. It reports a larger rate of termination of employment contracts in
municipalities affected by these shocks, in comparison to the control group. It shows that
employees are more likely to leave the health care labor force permanently after political
turnover and that public employees on unstable career tracks drive most of the disruption
in the employment contracts.