Boffa, FedericoMollisi, VincenzoPonzetto, Giacomo A. M.Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Departament d'Economia i Empresa2024-11-142024-11-142023-03-01http://hdl.handle.net/10230/68589Poor performance by the established political class can drive voters towards anti-establishment outsiders. Is the inffectiveness of incumbent politicians an important driver of the recent rise of populist parties? We provide an empirical test exploiting a sharp discontinuity in the wage of local politicians as a function of population in Italian municipalities. We find that the more skilled local politicians and more effective local government in municipalities above the threshold cause a signi cant drop in voter support for the populist Five-Star Movement in regional and national elections. Support for incumbent governing parties increases instead.application/pdfengL'accés als continguts d'aquest document queda condicionat a l'acceptació de les condicions d'ús establertes per la següent llicència Creative CommonsDo incompetent politicians breed populist voters? Evidence from Italian municipalities<resourceType xmlns="http://datacite.org/schema/kernel-3" resourceTypeGeneral="Other">info:eu-repo/semantics/workingPaper</resourceType><subject xmlns="http://datacite.org/schema/kernel-3" subjectScheme="keyword">populism</subject><subject xmlns="http://datacite.org/schema/kernel-3" subjectScheme="keyword">government e¢ ciency</subject><subject xmlns="http://datacite.org/schema/kernel-3" subjectScheme="keyword">politician quality</subject><subject xmlns="http://datacite.org/schema/kernel-3" subjectScheme="keyword">political agency</subject><subject xmlns="http://datacite.org/schema/kernel-3" subjectScheme="keyword">Macroeconomics and International Economics</subject><rights xmlns="http://datacite.org/schema/kernel-3">info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess</rights>