Political Economy
Lightning Round SessionFriday, Jan. 3, 2025 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM (PST)
- Chair: Ranganath Murthy, Western New England University
Do Tuition Subsidies Raise Political Participation?
Abstract
Civic externalities motivate public education expenditures, but estimates of the civic returns to large-scale education subsidies are scarce. We use 16 million financial aid applications and a regression discontinuity (RD) design to estimate how the United States' largest tuition-free college program impacts political participation. We find that each of the 2.6 million awards increased a student's voter turnout rate by 4 to 12 percentage points in 2020, raising total voter turnout by 1 percentage point and Biden's margin of victory by 0.5 percentage points in the awarding state. We calculate that 1 out of every 66 voters cast a ballot because of the tuition subsidy and find evidence consistent with peer socialization, among other mechanisms. The results are externally validated with another RD design using 2.5 million students local to a notch in the generosity of another financial aid program. Our findings demonstrate that the civic externalities of education spending can be large enough to sway elections.Gender and Electoral Incentives: Evidence from Crisis Response
Abstract
This paper provides new evidence on why men and women leaders make different choices. We first use a simple political agency model to illustrate how voters' gender bias can lead reelection-seeking female politicians to undertake different policies. We then test the model's predictions by exploring leaders’ responses to COVID-19. Assuming that voters expect policies to be less effective if decided by women, the model predicts that female politicians undertake less containment effort than male politicians when voters perceive the threat as low, while the opposite is true when voters perceive it as serious. Exploiting Brazilian close elections, we find that, early in the pandemic, female mayors were less likely to close non-essential businesses and female-led municipalities experienced more deaths per capita, while the reverse was true later on, once the health consequences materialized. These results are exclusively driven by mayors facing reelection and stronger in municipalities with greater gender discrimination.Globalization, Income Inequality and Political Realignment: The Transition from a Two-Party to a Multi-Party Electoral System in Costa Rica
Abstract
This study explores the proliferation of electoral parties in democracies globally, using the Costa Rican context as a laboratory. It seeks to understand whether the transformed political landscape in Costa Rica since 2002, marked by a shift from a two-party to a multi-party system, can be attributed to the growing disparities in income and increasing exposure to globalization. This research contributes significantly to the existing literature on globalization and its impact on electoral outcomes, particularly within the context of a developing nation with a solid democratic tradition. It uniquely combines two sets of administrative data at the individual level: electoral registries and social security employer-employee records. The study reveals a positive correlation between income and voter turnout. The primary findings related to income shocks are stable to the inclusion of immigration data. Notably, the analysis demonstrates that immigration decreases voter turnout across most specifications. However, when applying an IV strategy at the individual level, the presence of more immigrant colleagues appears to positively influence the voting behaviour of local workers, suggesting a potential buffer effect. Furthermore, our analysis at the polling station level reveals that areas with positive income gains tend to exhibit more stable voting preferences and declining support for traditional parties. Moreover, exposure to immigration appears to foster electoral volatility and, paradoxically, greater support for traditional parties, possibly as a refuge for discontented voters amidst evolving political landscapes.Populism and Narratives of Upward Mobility
Abstract
In the context of the surge in populism in Western democracies, this study examines the connection between narratives of economic upward mobility and attitudes towards populism. Initially, I collect approximately 3,000 stories of upward mobility from a representative online sample in the US. Subsequently, I pair these narratives with the Opportunity Atlas based on respondents' locations to explore variations in narrative themes (merit vs. luck, education, hard work, talent) across commuting zones characterized by high and low income mobility. Following this, I plan to conduct follow-up surveys incorporating an experiment, wherein respondents are primed with merit-based and luck-based narratives of upward mobility obtained previously. This exogenous variation in framing allows me to measure the impact on populist attitudes, assessed through a validated 12-item scale compromising anti-elitism, sovereignty of the people, and homogeneity of the people. I aim to test the following hypotheses derived from an adaptation of Shayo's Social Identity Model: (i) Luck-based upward mobility fosters perceptions of exclusion within a system favoring an elite (populism), while merit-based upward mobility has the opposite effect; (ii) Identifying with the upwardly mobile protagonist in terms of gender and race amplifies this effect. Through this contribution, I seek to illuminate the connection between perceived justice in economic opportunities and populist attitudes, providing insights into democratic stability and social cohesion.Power Consolidation in Groups
Abstract
I develop a model of how a society’s distribution of political power and economic resources evolves over time. Multiple lineages of players compete by accumulating power, which is modeled as an asset that increases the probability of winning conflicts over resources. This model provides sharp equilibrium predictions for how a society’s distribution of power evolves and whether it approaches a dictatorial, oligarchic, or inclusive regime in the long run. My main result shows that power and resources inevitably fall into the hands of a few when political competition is left unchecked in large societies. In addition to addressing a longstanding empirical puzzle, this result also suggests that persistently rising inequality observed in large countries such as the United States will not self‐correct; in light of this, I also provide insights into the policy interventions that can be used to counteract rising inequality in large societies.Recovering Voice: Is Out-of-District Giving a Substitute for Local Political Participation?
Abstract
A growing share of Americans live in electorally lopsided congressional districts, potentially depressing their political participation. Unlike with voting, there are no place-based restrictions on giving, raising the question of whether individuals disengaged by lopsided home districts find voice through greater non-local giving. I explore this using the post-2010 redistricting that exogenously reassigned individuals to more, or less, competitive districts. When an individual’s district becomes less competitive, she donates less to her district’s candidates and more to out-of-district candidates. Givers regard local and non-local giving as substitutes: a dollar reduction in within-district giving increases out-of-district giving by $0.48.Refugee Shelters and Locals' Electoral Outcomes: Evidence from the Venezuelan Refugee Crisis in Northern Brazil
Abstract
Since 2014, nearly one million Venezuelan refugees have entered Brazilian territory, and the border between the two countries in Roraima (the smallest Brazilian state in terms of GDP and population) has become the main refugee entry point. Responding to this influx, the Brazilian Government opened 11 shelters to host refugees across different neighborhoods of Boa Vista (Roraima's capital). Leveraging the quasi-random distribution of these shelters within the city, I explore how this policy affected locals' political support for far-right and anti-migration candidates. The detailed data contains voting outcomes and voters' characteristics at finer units within each polling station. According to the results, Brazilians closer to the shelters exhibited greater support for the far-right presidential and gubernatorial candidates, possibly at the expense of the incumbent governor involved in the shelter initiatives. The estimates were small in magnitude and shelters' absence would not have changed the election results, however, they reveal that shelters presented an accountability effect besides shifting locals' political preferences.Vetting for Virtue: Democracy’s Challenge in Excluding Criminals from Office
Abstract
This paper assesses the effectiveness of democratic systems in barring individuals with criminal backgrounds from political office. Unlike many countries, Norway has no legal restrictions against electing convicts to public office, underscoring the challenges democratic institutions face in vetting candidates. We analyze a comprehensive dataset that includes all local election candidates from 2003 to 2019, combined with detailed administrative records on criminal offenses. Our analysis shows that candidates running for office are less likely to have criminal records than the general population, with elected officials less likely to have criminal backgrounds than their unelected peers, and mayors being the most lawful. Political parties appear to be instrumental in filtering out candidates with criminal pasts from leading positions in elected councils. Voter influence on the exclusion of candidates with criminal histories appears negligible.JEL Classifications
- P1 - Capitalist Economies