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Political Competition, Welfare Outcomes and Expenditures on Human Development: The Experience of a Democracy

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Author Info
Richard Damania
Arnab Gupta
Abstract

There is a growing literature on the effect of electoral competition and democratic participation on issues such as corruption and government policy. The theoretical and empirical literature suggests that electoral competition has a beneficial impact on policies. This paper studies the effects of political competition and democratic participation on welfare outcomes. We develop a model to assess the effects of electoral competition on human developmental outcomes and empirically test the key predictions using data on infant mortality rates (IMR) in India. The empirical results provide strong support for the theoretical conjectures, which suggest that high electoral competition and high citizen participation in elections can explain much of the variation in IMR across different states in a democratic country like India.

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Paper provided by Econometric Society in its series Econometric Society 2004 Australasian Meetings with number 147.

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Date of creation: 11 Aug 2004
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Handle: RePEc:ecm:ausm04:147

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Related research
Keywords: human development; electoral competition;

Find related papers by JEL classification:
D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health
H72 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Budget and Expenditures

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Barro, Robert J, 2000. " Inequality and Growth in a Panel of Countries," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 5-32, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Grossman, Gene M & Helpman, Elhanan, 1994. "Protection for Sale," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 833-50, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, 2002. "Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262661314.
  4. Fredriksson, Per G. & Neumayer, Eric & Damania, Richard & Gates, Scott, 2005. "Environmentalism, democracy, and pollution control," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 343-365, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Bernheim, B Douglas & Whinston, Michael D, 1986. "Menu Auctions, Resource Allocation, and Economic Influence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 101(1), pages 1-31, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Robert Deacon, 2003. "Dictatorship, Democracy, and the Provision of Public Goods," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series 20-03, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara. [Downloadable!]
  7. Grossman, Gene M & Helpman, Elhanan, 1996. "Electoral Competition and Special Interest Politics," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 63(2), pages 265-86, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Bhargava, Alok & Jamison, Dean T. & Lau, Lawrence J. & Murray, Christopher J. L., 2001. "Modeling the effects of health on economic growth," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 423-440, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Robert T. Deacon, . "The Political Economy of Environment-Development Relationships: A Preliminary Framework," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series 11-99, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara. [Downloadable!]
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