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104
Women as policy makers: Evidence from a randomized policy experiment in India.
- Econometrica,
, 2004
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Female Socialization: How Daughters Affect Their Legislator Fathers' Voting on Women's Issues, NBER Working Paper No
, 2006
"... Parenting daughters, sociologists have shown, increases feminist sympathies. I test the hypothesis that children, much like neighbors or peers, can influence parental behavior. I demonstrate that conditional on total number of children, each daughter increases a congress person’s propensity to vote ..."
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Cited by 56 (0 self)
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Parenting daughters, sociologists have shown, increases feminist sympathies. I test the hypothesis that children, much like neighbors or peers, can influence parental behavior. I demonstrate that conditional on total number of children, each daughter increases a congress person’s propensity to vote liberally, particularly on reproductive rights issues. The results identify an important (and previously omitted) explanatory variable in the literature on congressional decision making. Additionally the paper highlights the relevance of child to parent behavioral influence.
Why Political Reservations
- Journal of the European Economic Association, April-May 2005
"... Many countries are amending their political systems to set aside positions to groups, such as women and racial or religious minorities, that are perceived as being disadvantaged. Using evidence from India, this article assesses the case for these reservations. JEL: H4, O15 ∗Acknowledgments: I thank ..."
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Cited by 24 (2 self)
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Many countries are amending their political systems to set aside positions to groups, such as women and racial or religious minorities, that are perceived as being disadvantaged. Using evidence from India, this article assesses the case for these reservations. JEL: H4, O15 ∗Acknowledgments: I thank Raghabendra Chattopadhyay and Petia Topalova for their collaboration on these projects, as well as Greg Fischer for outstanding research assistance and great comments. I thank Abhijit Banerjee, Rohini Pande, and seminar participants at the EEA meetings in Madrid for comments. I gratefully acknowledge
Voting Technology, Political Responsiveness, and Infant Health: Evidence from Brazil
, 2010
"... This paper studies the effects of an electronic voting technology that introduced visual aids in Brazilian elections and facilitated voting for the less educated. Estimates exploiting a regression discontinuity design embedded in its phase-in through time indicate that electronic voting reduced resi ..."
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Cited by 21 (0 self)
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This paper studies the effects of an electronic voting technology that introduced visual aids in Brazilian elections and facilitated voting for the less educated. Estimates exploiting a regression discontinuity design embedded in its phase-in through time indicate that electronic voting reduced residual (error-ridden and uncounted) votes and generated the de facto enfranchisement of a large fraction (11%) of the electorate. This enhanced political participation of less educated (poorer) voters is then shown to have: (1) increased the number of state legislators that are themselves less educated; and (2) shifted government spending towards public health care, a policy that is particularly beneficial to the poor; leading to (3) improved health services utilization (pre-natal visits) by less educated mothers and (4) reduced occurrence of low-weight births in this group. No effects on health care utilization by more educated mothers and on the weight of their newborns are found. The results are consistent with the predictions of political economy models and demonstrate that electronic voting can promote the political empowerment of the poor and raise their living standards.
Are Female Leaders Good for Education? Evidence from India . Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=894110
- Geographies of transnational femeinisms: The politics of place and scale in the world march of women’ Social Politics
, 2007
"... This paper shows that the gender of politicians affects the educational levels of individuals who grow up in the districts where these politicians are elected. Increasing female political representation by 10 percentage points increases the probability that an individual attains primary education in ..."
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Cited by 16 (2 self)
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This paper shows that the gender of politicians affects the educational levels of individuals who grow up in the districts where these politicians are elected. Increasing female political representation by 10 percentage points increases the probability that an individual attains primary education in urban areas by 6 percentage points, which is 21 % of the difference in primary education attainment between the richest and the poorest Indian states. Caste also matters, as female politicians who won seats reserved for lower castes and disadvantaged tribes are those who mainly have an effect. In addition, both the gender and caste of politicians determine who benefits more from their policies: in urban areas female politicians increase educational achievements of those of their gender and caste. A unique dataset collected on politicians in India is matched with individual data by cohort and district of residence. The political data allow the identification of close elections between women and men, which yield quasi-experimental election outcomes used to estimate the causal effect of the gender of politicians.
Political Dynasties
, 2007
"... Political dynasties have long been present in democracies, raising concerns that this inequality in the distribution of political power may reflect imperfections in democratic representation. However, the persistence of political elites may simply reflect differences in ability or political vocation ..."
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Cited by 13 (0 self)
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Political dynasties have long been present in democracies, raising concerns that this inequality in the distribution of political power may reflect imperfections in democratic representation. However, the persistence of political elites may simply reflect differences in ability or political vocation across families and not their entrenchment in power. We show that political dynasties in the Congress of the United States do not merely reflect permanent differences in family characteristics. On the contrary, using two instrumental variable techniques we find that political power is self-perpetuating: legislators who hold power for longer become more likely to have relatives entering Congress in the future. Thus, in politics, power begets power.
Institutional Corruption and Election Fraud: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Afghanistan
- Dataset.” American Economic Review
, 2015
"... We investigate the relationship between political networks, weak insti-tutions, and election fraud during the 2010 parliamentary election in Afghanistan combining: (i) data on political connections between can-didates and election officials; (ii) a nationwide controlled evaluation of a novel monitor ..."
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Cited by 11 (2 self)
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We investigate the relationship between political networks, weak insti-tutions, and election fraud during the 2010 parliamentary election in Afghanistan combining: (i) data on political connections between can-didates and election officials; (ii) a nationwide controlled evaluation of a novel monitoring technology; and (iii) direct measurements of aggregation fraud. We find considerable evidence of aggregation fraud in favor of connected candidates and that the announcement of a new monitoring technology reduced theft of election materials by about 60 percent and vote counts for connected candidates by about 25 percent. The results have implications for electoral competition and are poten-tially actionable for policymakers. (JEL C93, D02, D72, K42, O17) Many governments are not responsive to their citizens. Fair elections provide an important means of improving responsiveness by making elected officials account-able to voters.1 However, election fraud undermines this critical function in many young democracies, often at the hands of tightly networked groups of political elites. This paper examines whether candidates exploit connections to elections officials to add fraudulent votes during the aggregation process. We study this problem in 1 There is substantial empirical documentation of the benefits of improving political accountability (Besley
Do politicians’ preferences correspond to those of the voters? an investigation of political representation
- Public Choice
, 2007
"... Abstract This paper investigates to what extent voters and politicians have the same preferences for locally provided welfare services. We make use of two different types of survey questionnaires; one directed towards voters and one directed towards politicians. We reach two main conclusions in the ..."
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Cited by 9 (2 self)
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Abstract This paper investigates to what extent voters and politicians have the same preferences for locally provided welfare services. We make use of two different types of survey questionnaires; one directed towards voters and one directed towards politicians. We reach two main conclusions in the paper. First, we find that politicians have preferences for significantly different spending on locally provided welfare services compared to voters. Second, this difference remains even after controlling for politicians and voters having different socio-economic characteristics. For example, when analyzing female representation, we find that female politicians have significantly different preferences for spending than female voters. One implication of the latter result is that an increase in the ratio of female to male politicians may not be the only way to deal with the desire to increase the political representation of women.
2004) ‘Why do the Poor Receive Poor Services
- Economic and Political Weekly, February
"... Abstract: India exhibits a large reliance on targeted transfer payments and subsidies, and significant underprovision of social services such as education. These are puzzling outcomes because the poor in India, who vote in large numbers, would benefit most from more of the latter and less of the fo ..."
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Cited by 9 (0 self)
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Abstract: India exhibits a large reliance on targeted transfer payments and subsidies, and significant underprovision of social services such as education. These are puzzling outcomes because the poor in India, who vote in large numbers, would benefit most from more of the latter and less of the former. We argue that inadequate social services and excessive targeted transfers can be explained as a consequence of the incomplete information of voters, the lack of credibility of political promises, and social polarization. Disclaimer: The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent. This paper describes research in progress by the authors and is published to elicit comments and to further debate. Why do the poor receive poor services? Introduction: The
