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on Positive Political Economics |
| By: | Machado, Fabiana |
| Abstract: | For centuries it has been believed that the extension of the franchise in unequal societies would lead to relatively high levels of redistribution. According to international rankings, how- ever, among the fourteen most unequal countries in the world, nine have been democratic for at least the past fourteen years. A prerequisite for the adoption of redistributive policies is that there be elected representatives who are either committed to or who have an incentive to advocate for such policies. The prospects of such an outcome depend not only on candidates personal policy preferences and motivations, but also how they are perceived by voters. One important feature shared by highly unequal democracies is that they tend to be relatively young, with many new parties and candidates in the political scene. This means elections occur under a high degree of uncertainty about critical information voters need to chose their delegates. Thus, in this paper I develop a model of elections as a game of incomplete information to explore how uncertainty, candidates’ motivation (policy vs. office), and beliefs about their ideological inclinations affect what policy interests are likely to be represented in the political process. I explore the model’s assumptions and outcomes empirically using individual level data for each presidential election in Brazil since democratization. |
| Keywords: | Elections; Redistribution; Inequality; Uncertainty |
| JEL: | D72 D80 |
| Date: | 2011–09–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:35665&r=pol |
| By: | E Bracco |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes a theory of socially optimal districting in a legislative-election model with endogenous party platforms. We generalize the model of Coate and Knight (2007), allowing parties to strategically condition their platforms on the districting. The socially optimal districting re ects the ideological leaning of the population, so that parties internalize voters' preferences in their policy platforms. The optimal seat-vote curve is unbiased when voters are risk-neutral, and -contrary to previous findings-biased against the largest partisan group when voters are risk-averse. The model is then calibrated by an econometric analysis of the elections of U.S. State legislators during the 1990s. |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lan:wpaper:1611&r=pol |
| By: | Vincent Anesi (University of Nottingham); Philippe De Donder (Toulouse School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | We build a simple model of secession crises where a majority of voters may wish to accommodate the minority in order to prevent a secession attempt. We first show the existence of a majority voting equilibrium, where the median voter is decisive and most prefers a government’s type that is biased in favor of the minority. We then propose a measure of the secession risk at equilibrium and perform the comparative static analysis of the equilibrium policy location and of the secession risk with respect to several parameters: the cultural distinctiveness of the two regions, the relative weight attached by voters to economic (centripetal) -as opposed to (centrifugal) ideological- factors, the relative size of the minority region, the (exogenous) probability that a secession attempt is successful, and the intra-regional heterogeneity of preferences. |
| Keywords: | Majority voting, secession risk, cultural distinctiveness, conflict, overlapping regional preferences |
| JEL: | D72 D74 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ieb:wpaper:2011/12/doc2011-40&r=pol |
| By: | Bhalotra, Sonia R. (University of Bristol); Clots-Figueras, Irma (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) |
| Abstract: | We investigate whether politician gender influences policy outcomes in India. We focus upon antenatal and postnatal public health provision since the costs of poor services in this domain are disproportionately borne by women. Accounting for potential endogeneity of politician gender and the sample composition of births, we find that a one standard deviation increase in women's political representation results in a 1.5 percentage point reduction in neonatal mortality. Women politicians are more likely to build public health facilities and encourage antenatal care, institutional delivery and immunization. The results are topical given that a bill proposing quotas for women in state assemblies is currently pending in the Indian Parliament. |
| Keywords: | political identity, gender, mortality, health, social preferences, India |
| JEL: | H41 I18 O15 |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6216&r=pol |
| By: | Machado, Fabiana |
| Abstract: | Economic and political decisions usually involve a trade-off between efficiency and equality considerations. While some inequality is expected to prevail in our soci- eties, high levels of it are objectionable on various grounds. One of the fundamental roles of government is to collect and reallocate resources among its citizens, and iden- tifying the right policies to guide these reallocations is central to promoting higher equality. While we now have a good grasp of which policies lead to more equality and which do not, we know much less about why they seem to be adopted to varying degrees of intensity in some places and times and not in others. To explain this varia- tion in policy outcomes, the most fundamental task is to identify the constituencies for the different policies. Who supports what policies and under what conditions do they support them? In this paper this question is investigated based on public opinion data on preferences over taxation and government spending on conditional-cash-transfers, pension schemes, and education. All policies that were found to significantly affect inequality. We find that disagreement across socio-economic groups arise not so much on whether the government should tackle inequality, but on how it should go about doing it. Poorer respondents tend to support cash transfers to a greater extent than the rich. But the rich tend to be more likely to support expenditures on public provision education than the poor. Contrary to what is commonly assumed, inequality seems to breed altruism among the rich when it comes to the quintessential poverty reduction scheme of conditional-cash-transfers. |
| Keywords: | Preferences for redistribution; Inequality; Conditional cash transfers |
| JEL: | D70 H50 |
| Date: | 2011–10–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:35664&r=pol |
| By: | Cabrales, Antonio; Nagel, Rosemarie; Rodríguez Mora, José V. |
| Abstract: | We perform an experiment which provides a laboratory replica of some important features of the welfare state. In the experiment, all individuals in a group decide whether to make a costly effort, which produces a random (independent) outcome for each one of them. The group members then vote on whether to redistribute the resulting and commonly known total sum of earnings equally amongst themselves. This game has two equilibria, if played once. In one of them, all players make effort and there is little redistribution. In the other one, there is no effort and nothing |
| Keywords: | Redistribution; Political equilibrium; Voting; Multiple equilibria; Experiments; |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ner:carlos:info:hdl:10016/12890&r=pol |