Municipal investment expenditures by pork-barrel mayors: evidence from a transition economy

Abstract

Abstract The focus of this study is electoral accounting practices employed by mayors in municipalities in a selected, exemplary region in a post-socialist country – the Lodz region in Central Poland. The goal is to identify characteristics of pork-barrel mayors responsible for municipal investment expenditures: their terms of office, partisan affiliation, and gender. The generalised method of moments was applied to estimate the impact that the electoral accounting practices of mayors had on municipal investment expenditures. All 177 municipalities in the Lodz region were investigated, from 2003 until 2019. Contrary to expectations, it was found that electoral accounting was practised by next-term and independent mayors rather than first-term or party-affiliated ones.