Alesina, AlbertoTroiano, UgoCassidy, Traviss2016-07-292015Alesina, Alberto, Ugo Troiano, and Traviss Cassidy. 2015. Old and Young Politicians. Working paper, Department of Economics, Harvard University.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:27768984We evaluate the effect of a politician’s age on political governance, reelection rates,and policies using data on Italian local governments. Our results suggest that younger politicians are more likely to behave strategically in response to election incentives: they increase spending and obtain more transfers from higher levels of government in preelection years. We argue that is a sign of stronger career concerns incentives. The results are robust to adopting three different identification strategies: fixed-effects regression, standard regression discontinuity design, and an augmented regression discontinuity design that controls for residual heterogeneity.en-USpoliticiansageregression discontinuityResearch Paper or Report2016-07-29