Monitoring and the Value of Public Office in the Spanish Empire

Abstract: The paper examines how the ability to monitor and punish corruption affects the demand for political office. I use exogenous cross-country variation in the ability of different colonial governments of the Spanish Empire to monitor and punish corruption to identify the effect of greater oversight on the willingness to serve in the government. Using the prices at which the Spanish Crown auctioned-off provincial government positions throughout the Spanish Empire, I show that above average prices --a measure of demand for office-- are differentially higher in countries where the Crown was less able to oversee the performance of its provincial officials. The paper shows that the effect of monitoring and oversight changes the incentives of those who seek office in the first place.