Criminally Charged Politicians (Diogo Britto, Gianmarco Daniele, Marco Le Moglie, Paolo Pinotti, and Breno Sampaio)

Although honesty is likely the most important trait for a politician, we lack evidence on the selection

of crime-prone individuals into the political arena. In this paper, we take advantage of administrative
individual data on the Brazilian population to study whether criminally charged individuals are more
or less likely to enter politics, which policies influence their candidacy, and, once elected, we examine
their policy-making. Criminally prosecuted individuals are about twice more likely to enter politics
and to be elected, a difference not driven by observable characteristics. The entry of criminally charged
individuals is only marginally prevented by policies aimed at reducing rent-seeking, i.e. anti-corruption
audits or campaign spending limits. Finally, using a regression discontinuity (RD) analysis, we show
that in municipalities where incriminated mayors are in power, there is a higher incidence of babies
born underweight, and a higher incidence of political patronage, in line with an entry into politics
driven by rent-seeking motives.