DE GRUYTER ger 2020; 21(1): 35-64 Original Article Federico Quaresira*, Rafaella Santolini, and Fabio Fiorillo Political afliation in post-parliamentary careers in Italian public enterprises https://doi.org/10.1515/ ger-0016-0019 Abstract: It has long been recognized that the presence of politicians on the boards of directors of public frms may create inefciencies. Nevertheless, re search has so far neglected the efect of political afliation on the appointment of Members of Parliament to the boards of public frms. This article intends to fll this gap by conducting an empirical analysis on a sample of 945 deputies of the Italian Parliament elected over the period 1996-2001. Regression discontinuity estimates show that the centre-left coalition is about 25 percentage points more likely to appoint its Members of Parliament to the board of public enterprises than the centre-right coalition. Political appointments become more pronounced when the centre-left forms a governing coalition. Keyords: party afliation, political appointment, public enterprises, regression discontinuity design, Italy JEL Classifcation: D70, H82, J45, 132 1 Introduction There has been growing interest in post-parliamentary careers since the pioneer ing study of Blondel (1985). Politicians can remain until retirement in politics or leave their ofce in parliament to obtain more attractive jobs in the public or private sector (Stolz and Kintz, 2014). Alternatively, they can choose to go back to their original (pre-Parliament) occupation. In the present paper, we focus on politicians whose "parliamentary door revolves" towards public companies af ter exiting parliament. The post-parliamentary career in the public sector is espe- *Corresponding author: Federico Quaresima, Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Polytechnic University of Marche, P. le Martelli, 8, 60121, Ancona, Italy, e-mail: f.quaresima@un ivpm.it, ORCI D: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3231-850X Rafaella Santolini, Fabio Fiorillo, Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Polytechnic University of Marche, P. le Martelli, 8, 60121, Ancona, Italy, e-mails: r.santolini@univpm.it, f. forillo@univpm. it "