The economic literature considers voters quasi-rational agents that care about maximizing their individual welfare when deciding on who to vote for. Voters believe that, once a politician is elected, his or her characteristics will affect policy outcomes and consequently their private welfare. To assess whether mayors’ characteristics influence municipalities’ financial performance, I use a dataset composed of 278 Portuguese mainland municipalities from 2003 to 2016. I find that mayors’ age, education, occupation, and tenure influence the level of public investment, tax revenues, debt, and budget balances. Although most of the Portuguese voters only consider candidates’ political affiliation when deciding on who to vote for, my estimates do not show any significant impact of this characteristic on the financial indicators analyzed. Therefore, these results question the way Portuguese vote by arguing that, when voting for local government representatives, they should care about other characteristics among candidates besides their political affiliation.

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您应该为谁投票？葡萄牙地方政府的经验证据

经济文献认为选民准理性代理人在决定投票对象时会关心最大化其个人福利。选民们相信，一旦政治家当选，他或她的特点将影响政策结果，因此他们的私人福利。为了评估市长的特征是否影响市政当局的财务绩效，我使用了2003年至2016年由278个葡萄牙大陆市政当局组成的数据集。我发现市长的年龄，教育程度，职业和任期会影响公共投资水平，税收，债务和预算余额。尽管大多数葡萄牙选民在决定投票对象时仅考虑候选人的政治归属，但我的估计并未显示该特征对所分析的财务指标有任何重大影响。因此，