WORKING PAPERS

​CASH TRANSFERS, CLIENTELISM, AND POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT: EVIDENCE FROM BRAZIL

​Abstract: This paper uses Brazil’s Bolsa Família to show that poverty alleviation policies that are shielded from the influence of political intermediaries can reduce incumbency advantage, increase both electoral competition and candidate quality, reduce support for clientelistic parties, and lead incumbents to increase redistributive spending. The paper exploits a nonparametric multivariate regression discontinuity design and employs a novel identification strategy for the variation in program coverage. The theory proposes that cash transfers, by reducing the vulnerability of poor voters, make incumbents lose their ability to replace public good distribution with vote buying, pushing them to channel effort away from clientelism.

Download: May_2018

​REELECTION AND MANIPULATION IN CASH TRANSFERS

​Abstract: Using administrative data from Brazil’s Bolsa Família (BF), and a regression discontinuity design, this paper shows that mayors with reelection incentives are more likely to allow poor households to commit income underreporting fraud for the purpose of program eligibility. This fraud gives the mayor ability to claim credit over resources that amount to six times the average campaign spending per household, and increases their reelection probability. These perverse incentives call for external disciplining devices to keep politicians in check. I show that a higher risk of program audits by the federal government drastically reduces these effects of reelection incentives on program fraud.

Download: coming soon

Party, Race, and Neighborhood: An Upper-Bound Estimate of Geographic Partisan Sorting (with Scott Abramson)

Abstract: ​This paper evaluates the degree to which political partisanship is caused by the sorting of like-minded individuals into neighborhoods. While many view high levels of contemporary social and political polarization as the consequence of increased geographic concentration of partisans, we place an upper-bound estimate on this effect and show that sorting of individuals into neighborhoods explains at most 11% of the observed variation in party registration. Once we account for race this upper-bound estimate is reduced to just over 4%, indicating that if individuals do sort into neighborhoods, they do so by race. However, given the history of institutionalized racial segregation in the United States we are cautious in interpreting our upper bound estimate as evidence of purposeful racial sorting. Instead, we view our main result as the ultimate effect of a long history of geographic segregation based upon features which now systematically covary with political attitudes.

Download: upon request

MACHINE POLITICS AND CAPITAL GOODS

Abstract: The electoral success of clientelistic machines depends on their ability to elicit political support while keeping voters entrapped in poverty. This paper shows theory and evidence for why and how politicians target voters with goods that permanently reduce poverty, which I call capital goods. Because they undermine clientelistic efforts, machines avoid targeting capital goods to areas in which they are stronger than the opposition. I test this hypothesis with a program of water cisterns in rural Brazil where households are constantly affected by droughts. Variation in local political strength comes from both the size of local party membership rolls and the party alignment between mayors and state governors. Municipalities with aligned mayors are more likely to be targeted with cisterns by the state due to credit claiming opportunities, but only where the Governor’s party has a weak presence. Otherwise, states refrain from delivering cisterns to avoid impairing their own machines.

Download: upon request

WORK IN PROGRESS

Sleeping with the Enemy: Dynamic Electoral Competition in a Clientelistic Environment (with Sergio Montero and Gabriel López-Moctezuma)

Neighborhood Effects on Voter Turnout: An Upper-Bound Estimate for the US (with Scott Abramson)

Cash Transfers and Local Politics in Mexico: Do They Really Enfranchise the Poor? (with Clémence Idoux)

Buying Legislative Support with Government Grants