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Young Politicians and Long-Term Policy

Author

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  • Dahis, Ricardo
  • de las Heras, Ivan
  • Saavedra, Santiago

Abstract

A fundamental difficulty in policy-making is that policies often have costs today but benefits far into the future. This difficulty is particularly salient to climate change and environmental conservation policy. A critical dimension in this trade-off is the age of politicians, which impacts their life expectancy, career concerns, and what education they received. We study this trade-off in the case of Brazilian mayors and environmental outcomes, using a regression discontinuity design for close elections. We find that when a young politician is elected, there is a reduction in deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions, without significant effects on municipal gross domestic product. Young politicians allocate more spending to education and reducing liabilities, suggesting that the time horizon is important. Our study of mechanisms suggests young mayors matter because they belong to a new cohort, not because of age per se.

Suggested Citation

  • Dahis, Ricardo & de las Heras, Ivan & Saavedra, Santiago, 2023. "Young Politicians and Long-Term Policy," Working papers 102, Red Investigadores de Economía.
    • Handle: RePEc:rie:riecdt:102
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    1. Sebastian Calonico & Matias D. Cattaneo & Rocio Titiunik, 2014. "Robust data-driven inference in the regression-discontinuity design," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 14(4), pages 909-946, December.
    2. Alberto Alesina & Traviss Cassidy & Ugo Troiano, 2019. "Old and Young Politicians," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 86(344), pages 689-727, October.
    3. Matias D. Cattaneo & Nicolas Idrobo & Rocio Titiunik, 2019. "A Practical Introduction to Regression Discontinuity Designs: Foundations," Papers 1911.09511, arXiv.org.
    4. Andrew Gelman & Guido Imbens, 2019. "Why High-Order Polynomials Should Not Be Used in Regression Discontinuity Designs," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(3), pages 447-456, July.
    5. Bragança, Arthur & Dahis, Ricardo, 2022. "Cutting special interests by the roots: Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 215(C).
    6. Burgess, Robin & Costa, Francisco J M & Olken, Ben, 2019. "The Brazilian Amazon’s Double Reversal of Fortune," SocArXiv 67xg5, Center for Open Science.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Deforestation; Politicans' Age;

    JEL classification:

    • P18 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Energy; Environment
    • Q23 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Forestry
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

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