This paper provides evidence for the importance of direct electoral processes by investigating the consequences for public spending of an unexpected reform that repealed direct elections for local (provincial) politicians in Italy. Direct elections were substituted with indirect ones, whereby directly elected municipal politicians choose a municipal mayor to serve as provincial president. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I document two main consequences of the reform. First, municipalities connected to the provincial presidents tend to receive disproportionately more public funds after the reform, suggesting geographic favoritism increased. Second, the share of provincial resources spent on public goods drops in favor of bureaucratic costs. I discuss suggestive evidence that these results are driven by weaker electoral incentives rather than by the selection of worse politicians.

中文翻译：

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直接点比较好？意大利地方政府废除直选的证据

本文通过调查废除意大利地方（省）政客直接选举的意外改革对公共支出的影响，为直接选举程序的重要性提供了证据。直接选举被间接选举所取代，由直接选举产生的市政政治家选举一名市市长担任省主席。我采用双重差异策略，记录了改革的两个主要后果。首先，改革后与省长有联系的城市往往会获得更多的公共资金，这表明地域偏袒有所增加。其次，省级资源用于公共产品的比例下降，有利于官僚成本。