Replication data for: Looking to the Next Election: Electoral Incentives as a Force Against Corruption in Brazilian Municipalities

Abstract: We show that higher-office election incentives affec mayoral corruption levels. Using measures of political corruption compiled by Ferraz and Finan (2011), we replicate and refine their findings on second-term mayoral reelection incentives using coarsened exact matching. We proceed to add data on mayors who subsequently ran for governor, senator, or state or federal legislator and test whether higher office reelection incentives have the same effect on levels of corruption in the candidate's previous lower office term. Using coarsened exact matching, we find that first-term mayors illegally use about 58 percent fewer funds than second-term mayors, and second-term mayors who run for higher office illegally use about 86 percent fewer funds than second-term mayors who never run for higher office. Across various matching estimators, we consistently find that the disincentive for corrupt behavior when a second-term mayor runs for higher office is about twice as strong as the disincentive for corrupt behavior when a first-term mayor runs for a second term.