IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/10535.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Decentralisation and Political Business Cycle: Fund Utilization of the MP-LADS in India

Author

Listed:
  • Pal, Rupayan
  • Das, Aparajita

Abstract

The Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MP-LADS) came in effect in 1993, closely followed by the 73rd Amendment to the Constitution, along with the wave of democratic decentralisation process in India. The MP-LADS allows for a fixed amount, non-lapsable Rs. 2 crores per year for each Member of the Parliament (MP), at the discretion of the MPs to carry out developmental works of capital nature in their respective constituencies. In last 14 years, more than 8 times of the annual expenditure on higher education by the central government has been spent on the MP-LADS. This paper examines whether there is any political business cycle in spending funds under the MP-LADS, its extent, and determinants. We find that there are political business cycles in spending by the MPs, and its extent varies across Lok Sabha constituencies. The extent of political business cycle is lower in case of leftist MPs compared to that in case of centrist and rightist MPs. Higher degree of competition faced in the last election by an MP induces him/her to misuse the scheme more severely, and younger MPs seems to be less inclined to generate political business cycle in spending. We also find that higher level of awareness of general citizens and better law and order conditions in states restricts MPs from misusing funds to gain political mileage.

Suggested Citation

  • Pal, Rupayan & Das, Aparajita, 2008. "Decentralisation and Political Business Cycle: Fund Utilization of the MP-LADS in India," MPRA Paper 10535, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:10535
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/10535/1/MPRA_paper_10535.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Akhmed Akhmedov & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2004. "Opportunistic Political Cycles: Test in a Young Democracy Setting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(4), pages 1301-1338.
    2. Seitz, Helmut, 2000. "Fiscal Policy, Deficits and Politics of Subnational Governments: The Case of the German Laender," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 102(3-4), pages 183-218, March.
    3. Kenneth Rogoff & Anne Sibert, 1988. "Elections and Macroeconomic Policy Cycles," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 55(1), pages 1-16.
    4. Faguet, Jean-Paul, 2004. "Does decentralization increase government responsiveness to local needs?: Evidence from Bolivia," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(3-4), pages 867-893, March.
    5. Alberto Alesina & Nouriel Roubini & Gerald D. Cohen, 1997. "Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262510944, December.
    6. Rogoff, Kenneth, 1990. "Equilibrium Political Budget Cycles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 21-36, March.
    7. Tugrul Gurgur & Anwar Shah, 2014. "Localization and corruption: panacea or pandora's box?," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 15(1), pages 109-136, May.
    8. Per Pettersson-Lidbom, 2001. "An Empirical Investigation of the Strategic Use of Debt," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(3), pages 570-583, June.
    9. Pranab Bardhan, 2002. "Decentralization of Governance and Development," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(4), pages 185-205, Fall.
    10. William D. Nordhaus, 1975. "The Political Business Cycle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 42(2), pages 169-190.
    11. Qian, Yingyi & Roland, Gerard, 1998. "Federalism and the Soft Budget Constraint," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(5), pages 1143-1162, December.
    12. Blais, Andre & Nadeau, Richard, 1992. "The Electoral Budget Cycle," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 74(4), pages 389-403, December.
    13. Mahal, Ajay & Srivastava, Vivek & Sanan, Deepak, 2000. "Decentralization and Public Sector Delivery of Health and Education Services: The Indian Experience," Discussion Papers 280264, University of Bonn, Center for Development Research (ZEF).
    14. Papke, Leslie E & Wooldridge, Jeffrey M, 1996. "Econometric Methods for Fractional Response Variables with an Application to 401(K) Plan Participation Rates," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(6), pages 619-632, Nov.-Dec..
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Toke S. Aidt & Francisco José Veiga & Linda Gonçalves Veiga, 2007. "Election Results and Opportunistic Policies: An Integrated Approach," NIPE Working Papers 24/2007, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    2. Foremny, Dirk & Riedel, Nadine, 2014. "Business taxes and the electoral cycle," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 48-61.
    3. Toke Aidt & Francisco Veiga & Linda Veiga, 2011. "Election results and opportunistic policies: A new test of the rational political business cycle model," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 148(1), pages 21-44, July.
    4. Dirk Foremny & Ronny Freier & Marc-Daniel Moessinger & Mustafa Yeter, 2018. "Overlapping political budget cycles," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 177(1), pages 1-27, October.
    5. Foremny, Dirk & Freier, Ronny & Moessinger, Marc-Daniel & Yeter, Mustafa, 2014. "Overlapping political budget cycles in the legislative and the executive," ZEW Discussion Papers 14-099, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    6. Aidt, Toke S. & Mooney, Graham, 2014. "Voting suffrage and the political budget cycle: Evidence from the London Metropolitan Boroughs 1902–1937," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 53-71.
    7. Castro, Vítor & Martins, Rodrigo, 2018. "Politically driven cycles in fiscal policy: In depth analysis of the functional components of government expenditures," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 44-64.
    8. Marcos Yamada Nakaguma & Siegfried Bender, 2004. "A Emenda Da Reeleição E A Lei De Responsabilidade Fiscal: Impactos Sobre Ciclos Políticos E Performance Fiscal Dos Estados (1986-2002)," Anais do XXXII Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 32nd Brazilian Economics Meeting] 025, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    9. Georgios Efthyvoulou, 2012. "Political budget cycles in the European Union and the impact of political pressures," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 153(3), pages 295-327, December.
    10. Margarita Katsimi & Vassilis Sarantides, 2012. "Do elections affect the composition of fiscal policy in developed, established democracies?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 151(1), pages 325-362, April.
    11. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political business cycles 40 years after Nordhaus," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 166(1), pages 235-259, January.
    12. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political Business Cycles 40 Years after Nordhaus," Post-Print hal-01291401, HAL.
    13. Bernardino Benito & María-Dolores Guillamón & Ana-María Ríos, 2021. "Political Budget Cycles in Public Revenues: Evidence From Fines," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(4), pages 21582440211, November.
    14. Linda G. Veiga & Georgios Efthyvoulou & Atsuyoshi Morozumi, 2018. "Political Budget Cycles: Conditioning Factors and New Evidence," NIPE Working Papers 21/2018, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    15. Linda Veiga & Francisco Veiga, 2007. "Political business cycles at the municipal level," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 131(1), pages 45-64, April.
    16. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political Business Cycles 40 Years after Nordhaus," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-01291401, HAL.
    17. Jan Kluge & Gunther Markwardt & Christian Thater, 2015. "Self-preserving Leviathans - Evidence from Regional-level Data," CESifo Working Paper Series 5177, CESifo.
    18. Toke Aidt & Graham Mooney, 2014. "Voter suffrage and the political budget cycle: evidence from the London Metropolitan Boroughs 1902-1937," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1401, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    19. Jan Kluge & Gunther Markwardt & Christian Thater, 2017. "Self-Preserving Leviathans Evidence from Local-Level Data," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(4), pages 594-621, November.
    20. Niklas Potrafke, 2006. "Political Effects on the Allocation of Public Expenditures: Empirical Evidence from OECD Countries," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 653, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Decentralisation; Political Business Cycle; Local Area Development; Members of Parliament;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East
    • H7 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:10535. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.