Economic reform, voting, and local political intervention: Evidence from India

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Tandon, Sharad
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2011.05.004
• 发表日期: 2012
• 页码: 221-231
• 关键词: economic reform; voting; decentralization

摘要

This paper uses the Indian tariff reforms of the early nineties to estimate how voters hurt by economic reforms respond. Regions more hurt by the tariff reform increased their support for both the party that initiated their suffering and parties with similar preferences in favor of poverty-centric policies. This response is surprisingly sophisticated, where voters did not simply punish incumbents for negative income shocks and correctly discounted initial anti-reform stances by opposition parties that later turned out to be false. Furthermore, the strength of this voting response varied with both geography and local political incentives, suggesting that the economic effects of reforms might vary substantially in large and decentralized democracies. Published by Elsevier B.V.