scholarly journals (A)Political Constituency Development Funds: Evidence from Pakistan

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Rabia Malik
Keyword(s):  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Distributive Politics ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Development Fund ◽  
Partisan Bias ◽  
Development Patterns ◽  
Ruling Party

Most of the distributive politics literature focuses on how incumbent politicians allocate development resources in the absence of spending rules, and on the politicization of rules when they do determine distribution. What is less clear is whether politically neutral spending rules lead to neutral spending. Using new data on a long-running federal development fund and elections from Pakistan in a regression discontinuity design, the author presents strong evidence that the ruling party manipulated fund distribution to disproportionately benefit its co-partisans and punish the weakest opposition. Considering various factors, partisan bias is the most plausible explanation. These findings are important not only because the purpose of rules-based funds is to prevent politicized distribution but also because they have implications for development patterns and for using such funds to address questions about legislator effort and patronage patterns within constituencies, which requires assuming that legislators do receive their share of funds in the first place.

Bypassing the Enemy: Distributive Politics, Credit Claiming, and Nonstate Organizations in Brazil

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 304-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natália S. Bueno
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Government Spending ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Distributive Politics ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Effective Strategy ◽  
Government Programs ◽  
Credit Claiming ◽  
Original Survey

How do incumbents prevent the opposition from claiming credit for government programs? The received scholarly wisdom is that central government authorities favor copartisans in lower tiers of government to reward allies and punish opponents. Yet this depiction ignores the range of strategies available to incumbents at the center. I argue that another effective strategy is to channel resources through nonstate organizations, thus bypassing the opposition and reducing “credit hijacking.” Using a regression-discontinuity design with data from Brazil, I show that mayors from the president’s party receive more resources, but that the election of an opposition mayor induces the central government to shift resources to nonstate organizations that operate in the locality. Original survey data, fieldwork, and data on organizations’ leaders support the claim that opposition mayors do not hijack credit from government spending through nonstate organizations.

scholarly journals The Effect of Electing Women on Future Female Candidate Selection Patterns: Findings from a Regression Discontinuity Design

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Jankowski ◽  
Kamil Marcinkiewicz ◽  
Anna Gwiazda
Keyword(s):  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Contagion Effect ◽  
Representation System ◽  
Incumbency Advantage ◽  
Female Candidate

AbstractIn this article, we address the question of how electing women to national or subnational parliaments affects future female candidate selection in an open-list proportional representation system, using the example of Poland. We consider three potential effects of electing a woman. First, based on existing theories of the incumbency advantage, elected women should have higher chances of reselection and reelection in future elections (incumbency effect). Second, as a result of becoming more powerful within their party, elected women might have a stronger influence on future list composition, and thus more women should run for office on these lists (empowerment effect). Finally, we argue that other parties might adjust their candidate selection patterns in response to the election of women on other party lists (contagion effect). We find strong evidence for the incumbency effect and some support for the contagion effect. The empowerment hypothesis, however, finds no empirical support.

Politics and Local Economic Growth: Evidence from India

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 229-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Asher ◽  
Paul Novosad
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Economic Impact ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Share Prices ◽  
Local Economic Growth ◽  
Night Lights ◽  
Ruling Party

Political favoritism affects the allocation of government resources, but is it consequential for growth? Using a close election regression discontinuity design and data from India, we measure the local economic impact of being represented by a politician in the ruling party. Favoritism leads to higher private sector employment, higher share prices of firms, and increased output as measured by night lights; the three effects are similar and economically substantive. Finally, we present evidence that politicians influence firms primarily through control over the implementation of regulation. (JEL D72, L51, O17, O18, O43, R11)

Splitting the Difference? Causal Inference and Theories of Split-party Delegations

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 439-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Butler ◽  
Matthew J. Butler
Keyword(s):  
Causal Inference ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Senate Elections ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Using Data

We provide an introduction to the regression discontinuity design (RDD) and use the technique to evaluate models of sequential Senate elections predicting that the winning party for one Senate seat will receive fewer votes in the next election for the other seat. Using data on U.S. Senate elections from 1946 to 2004, we find strong evidence that the outcomes of the elections for the two Senate seats are independent.

scholarly journals Effectiveness of a Power Factor Correction Policy in Improving the Energy Efficiency of Large-Scale Electricity Users in Ghana

Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (13) ◽  
pp. 2582 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Lotsu ◽  
Yuichiro Yoshida ◽  
Katsufumi Fukuda ◽  
Bing He
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Power Factor ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Power Factor Correction ◽  
Energy Crisis ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
The Government ◽  
Power Factor Improvement ◽  
The Impact

Confronting an energy crisis, the government of Ghana enacted a power factor correction policy in 1995. The policy imposes a penalty on large-scale electricity users, namely, special load tariff (SLT) customers of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), whose power factor is below 90%. This paper investigates the impact of this policy on these firms’ power factor improvement by using panel data from 183 SLT customers from 1994 to 1997 and from 2012. To avoid potential endogeneity, this paper adopts a regression discontinuity design (RDD) with the power factor of the firms in the previous year as a running variable, with its cutoff set at the penalty threshold. The result shows that these large-scale electricity users who face the penalty because their power factor falls just short of the threshold are more likely to improve their power factor in the subsequent year, implying that the power factor correction policy implemented by Ghana’s government is effective.

How Much of the Incumbency Advantage is Due to Scare-Off?

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 493-514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew B. Hall ◽  
James M. Snyder
Keyword(s):  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Incumbency Advantage ◽  
Previous Election ◽  
Us Senate ◽  
State Legislative

This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the degree to which incumbents scare off challengers with previous officeholder experience. The estimates indicate a surprisingly small amount of scare-off, at least in cases where the previous election was nearly tied. As Lee and others have shown (and as we confirm for our samples) the estimated party incumbency advantage in these same cases is quite large—in fact, it is about as large as the average incumbency advantage for all races found using other approaches. Drawing from previous estimates of the electoral value of officeholder experience, we thus calculate that scare-off in these cases accounts for only about 5–7 percent of the party incumbency advantage. We show that these patterns are similar in elections for US House seats, statewide offices and US senate seats, and state legislative seats.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document