Members of Parliament for sale?

That’s the question posed by a new piece of academic research by  Andrew Eggers and Jens Hainmueller. It shows just how much richer Conservative (though not Labour) MPs have ended up by the time they died:

While the role of money in policymaking is a central question in political economy research, surprisingly little attention has been given to the rents politicians actually derive from politics. We use both matching and a regression discontinuity design to analyze an original dataset on the estates of recently deceased British politicians. We find that serving in Parliament roughly doubled the wealth at death of Conservative MPs but had no discernible effect on the wealth of Labour MPs. We argue that Conservative MPs profited from office in a lax regulatory environment by using their political positions to obtain outside work as directors, consultants, and lobbyists, both while in office and after retirement. Our results are consistent with anecdotal evidence on MPs’ outside financial dealings but suggest that the magnitude of Conservatives’ financial gains from office was larger than has been appreciated.

Read more here.