03/25/2026
News Release: João Pedro Bastos, Ph.D. Student in Agricultural and Applied Economics at Texas Tech University, Winner of the 12th Annual Elinor & Vincent Ostrom Prize for Best Combined Paper and Presentation by a Graduate Student
The Public Choice Society is pleased to announce that João Pedro (J.P.) Bastos is the winner of the 12th annual Elinor & Vincent Ostrom Prize for the best combined paper and presentation at our 2026 annual meetings for his paper, “The Private Gains from Political Office: Evidence from Close Mayoral Elections in Brazil”.
The Prize carries a commemorative plaque and $2,000 honorarium sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. Bastos’s paper was selected as one of three finalists among a field of eligible papers, and then presented on a special session at the 63rd Annual Meetings of the Public Choice Society in San Antonio, Texas. The Society also congratulates the other two finalists:
- Eliza Halatek, Ph.D. Student in Economics and Finance at University of Warsaw, for her paper, “One or Too Many Voices? Introducing the Central Bank Cacophony Index”; and
- Zora Mihaley, Ph.D. Student in Political Science, University of California Irvine, for her paper “Measuring the Strategic Value of States in the U.S. Electoral College”.
The Public Choice Society is an international, interdisciplinary association of collective action researchers in economics, political science, sociology, law, and related disciplines. The Society has held annual meetings each year since 1963. Among the Society’s past presidents, three have been awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences: James Buchanan in 1986, Vernon Smith in 2002, and Elinor Ostrom in 2009.
Vincent and Elinor Ostrom both served as Presidents of the Society, in 1967–69 and 1982–84 respectively. The naming of this Award recognizes their ceaseless dedication throughout their careers to working with graduate students, not only on their research skills but equally on their writing and presentation skills.
Society President John Aldrich said, “J.P.’s paper is exactly the kind of work that Lin and Vincent inspired. The field of entries this year was exceptionally strong, and J.P.’s paper stood out for both the quality of its scholarship and the clarity of its presentation.”
Bastos’s paper is a rigorous and empirically disciplined inquiry into one of the oldest and most important questions in political economy: what do politicians actually get out of holding office?” Using Brazil as an empirical setting in which corruption and rent-seeking are known to pervade public institutions, the paper draws on official wealth disclosures publicly filed by all candidates for office. Applying a regression discontinuity design to more than 10,000 mayoral elections between 2008 and 2024, Bastos finds that in municipalities with weak institutional oversight, mayoral election winners’ wealth grew between 7.5 to 10.5 percent faster per year than runners-up did. Interestingly, in municipalities where voters’ monitoring costs are higher due to a lack of a local radio news station, the annual wealth advantage was 6 to 8 percentage points, compared to negligible private wealth returns in municipalities that do have a radio station. Bastos rules out the leading alternative explanations, including voter selection of “honest” candidates and reverse causality from mayoral policy choices. Overall, the paper offers credible evidence that local institutional and media oversight are causal determinants of political enrichment.
“Bastos’s work,” Executive Director and Past President Edward Lopez said, “and that of so many strong entries this year, reflects what the Ostroms instilled in their students: the conviction that improving institutions is not merely an abstract intellectual project, but a practical means of improving governance and constraining power.”
The Ostrom Prize is selected according to a two-stage procedure. First, eligible papers are ranked by a selection committee composed of PCS Executive Committee members and senior members of the Society. The top papers advance as finalists to the second stage, in which finalists present their papers on a special session where accomplished and distinguished scholars serve as discussants. The Prize winner is announced and recognized during the Saturday Awards Luncheon of the annual meetings.
Congratulations to all three finalists for their excellent work. And many thanks to those who served on the prize selection committee.
