Don’t put the state capital too far away sorry Albany but Austin is fine

In this paper I exploit a novel and rich data-set with biographical information of US state legislators to investigate their sorting based on remoteness and attractiveness of the state capital. The main finding of the chapter is that in more remote US state capitals the legislators are on average less educated and experienced. The results are robust to using different measures of remoteness, based on the spatial distribution of the population, and controlling for other characteristics of the legislatures. To identify the causal effect of capitals’ remoteness, I use instrumental variables relying on proximity of capitals to the state centroids. Finally, I also find that legislators’ education affects public good provision and corruption.

That is the abstract of the job market paper of Giuseppe Rossitti from the London School of Economics.