Politics and public goods in developing countries: Evidence from the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Blakeslee, David S.
• 署名单位: New York University; New York University Abu Dhabi
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2017.12.011
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 1-19
• 关键词: Political economy; public goods; INDIA

摘要

This paper employs an instrumental variables strategy to identify the effect of party ideology on policy outcomes. Exogenous variation in party representation is generated by the assassination of the leader of the Congress party, which occurred midway through India's national elections in 1991, and dramatically increased the probability of Congress victory for a subset of constituencies. Representation by the Congress party leads to a substantial increase in the provision of public goods favored by the poor, consistent with the party's expressed populist agenda. Among the salient changes are increases in the availability of drinking water and primary education, and declines in agricultural and industrial electrification and telephone coverage. I compare these effects to those obtained using a regression discontinuity design, and find that the latter yields little effect of Congress representation on public goods allocations. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.