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Government Transfers and Political Support

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Author Info
Marco Manacorda
Edward Miguel
Andrea Vigorito
Abstract

We estimate the impact of a large anti-poverty program - the Uruguayan PANES - on political support for thegovernment that implemented it. The program mainly consisted of a monthly cash transfer for a period ofroughly two and half years. Using the discontinuity in program assignment based on a pre-treatment score, wefind that beneficiary households are 21 to 28 percentage points more likely to favor the current government(relative to the previous government). Impacts on political support are larger among poorer households and forthose near the center of the political spectrum, consistent with the probabilistic voting model in politicaleconomy. Effects persist after the cash transfer program ends. We estimate that the annual cost of increasinggovernment political support by 1 percentage point is roughly 0.9% of annual government social expenditures.

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Paper provided by Centre for Economic Performance, LSE in its series CEP Discussion Papers with number dp0912.

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Date of creation: Mar 2009
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Handle: RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp0912

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Related research
Keywords: Conditional cash transfers; redistributive politics; voting; regression discontinuity;

Find related papers by JEL classification:
I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

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  4. Simonsohn, Uri & Karlsson, Niklas & Loewenstein, George & Ariely, Dan, 2008. "The tree of experience in the forest of information: Overweighing experienced relative to observed information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 263-286, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. Dahlberg, M. & Johansson, E., 1999. "On the Vote Purchasing Behavior of Incumbent Governments," Papers 1999:24, Uppsala - Working Paper Series.
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  7. Case, Anne, 2001. "Election goals and income redistribution: Recent evidence from Albania," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 405-423, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Levitt, Steven D & Snyder, James M, Jr, 1997. "The Impact of Federal Spending on House Election Outcomes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(1), pages 30-53, February.
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