The political consequences of resource scarcity: Targeted spending in a water-stressed democracy

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Mahadevan, Meera; Shenoy, Ajay
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Irvine; University of California System; University of California Santa Cruz
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2023.104842
• 发表日期: 2023

摘要

We study whether resource scarcity enhances the scope for targeted spending in India. Farmers without access to groundwater during dry seasons cope using a large public-aid program controlled by local politicians. We leverage a multidimensional regression discontinuity for exogenous variation in whether local politicians are aligned with the state's ruling party. We find that the state government channels dis-proportionate funds to politically-aligned jurisdictions in water-stressed areas and gains votes in subse-quent elections. However, we find no partisan differences in aid allocation for non-water-stressed areas, suggesting a selective targeting of public funds to garner votes in the highest-return regions.(c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).