IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/i4rdps/39.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Political Turnover Negatively Affects the Quality of Public Services: A Replication

Author

Listed:
  • Gallegos, Sebastian

Abstract

The politically motivated replacement in local governments is a pervasive fact in our modern democracies. Whether it has causal effects on the quality of public services, such as education, is a critical question and yet understudied. This paper uses a regression discontinuity design (RDD) for close elections to replicate Akthari, Moreira and Trucco (2022) who find negative effects on the quality of public education in Brazil (.05-.08 standard deviations of lower test scores). I first reproduce these main results, finding minor computational differences that have no effect on the conclusions. I also show that the estimates for Brazil are in general robust to different specifications following Brodeur, Cook and Heyes (2020). Finally, I implement the same RDD framework now applied to Chilean administrative records to find null effects on test scores. Taken together, these results suggest that political turnover has weakly negative effects on service quality.

Suggested Citation

  • Gallegos, Sebastian, 2023. "Political Turnover Negatively Affects the Quality of Public Services: A Replication," I4R Discussion Paper Series 39, The Institute for Replication (I4R).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:i4rdps:39
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/272772/1/I4R-DP039.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sebastian Calonico & Matias D. Cattaneo & Max H. Farrell & Rocío Titiunik, 2019. "Regression Discontinuity Designs Using Covariates," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(3), pages 442-451, July.
    2. Abel Brodeur & Nikolai Cook & Anthony Heyes, 2020. "A Proposed Specification Check for p-Hacking," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 110, pages 66-69, May.
    3. Mitra Akhtari & Diana Moreira & Laura Trucco, 2022. "Political Turnover, Bureaucratic Turnover, and the Quality of Public Services," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(2), pages 442-493, February.
    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. Ay, Jean-Sauveur & Le Gallo, Julie, 2021. "The Signaling Values of Nested Wine Names," Working Papers 321851, American Association of Wine Economists.
    2. Benjamin Marx & Vincent Pons & Vincent Rollet, 2022. "Electoral Turnovers," NBER Working Papers 29766, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Atı̇la Abdulkadı̇roğlu & Joshua D. Angrist & Yusuke Narita & Parag Pathak, 2022. "Breaking Ties: Regression Discontinuity Design Meets Market Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(1), pages 117-151, January.
    4. Hamed Moghadam & Patrick Puhani & Joanna Tyrowicz, 2023. "Pension Reforms and Couples Labour Supply Decisions," RF Berlin - CReAM Discussion Paper Series 2309, Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin) - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM).
    5. James G. MacKinnon & Morten Ørregaard Nielsen & Matthew D. Webb, 2023. "Fast and reliable jackknife and bootstrap methods for cluster‐robust inference," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(5), pages 671-694, August.
    6. Pastore, Chiara & Jones, Andrew M., 2023. "Human capital consequences of missing out on a grammar school education," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    7. Dang, Hai-Anh H. & Trinh, Trong-Anh, 2020. "Does the COVID-19 Pandemic Improve Global Air Quality? New Cross-national Evidence on Its Unintended Consequences," GLO Discussion Paper Series 606, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    8. Christopher Neilson & Adam Altmejd & Andres Barrios-Fernandez & Marin Drlje & Dejan Kovac, 2019. "Siblings' Effects on College and Major Choices: Evidence from Chile, Croatia and Sweden," Working Papers 633, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    9. Long Wang & Qifeng Zhao & Wenyin Chen, 2023. "Political Promotion and Manufacturing Firm Productivity: Evidence from Chinese Firms," Review of Economic Assessment, Anser Press, vol. 2(2), pages 1-16, August.
    10. Hansen, Benjamin & Miller, Keaton & Weber, Caroline, 2020. "Federalism, partial prohibition, and cross-border sales: Evidence from recreational marijuana," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    11. Adam Altmejd & Andrés Barrios-Fernández & Marin Drlje & Joshua Goodman & Michael Hurwitz & Dejan Kovac & Christine Mulhern & Christopher Neilson & Jonathan Smith, 2021. "O Brother, Where Start Thou? Sibling Spillovers on College and Major Choice in Four Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(3), pages 1831-1886.
    12. Raphael Flepp & Pascal Flurin Meier, 2024. "Struck by Luck: Noisy Capability Cues and CEO Dismissal," Working Papers 389, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    13. Rivers, Nicholas & Woerman, Matt & Yassin, Kareman, 2023. "Yellow Vests, Pessimistic Beliefs, and Carbon Tax Aversion (2022): A Comment," I4R Discussion Paper Series 58, The Institute for Replication (I4R).
    14. Fernando Aragón & Ricardo Pique, 2020. "Better the devil you know? Reelected politicians and policy outcomes under no term limits," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 182(1), pages 1-16, January.
    15. Larch, Martin & Orseau, Eloïse & van der Wielen, Wouter, 2021. "Do EU fiscal rules support or hinder counter-cyclical fiscal policy?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    16. Tommaso Giommoni & Gabriel Loumeau, 2022. "Taxation with a Grain of Salt: The Long-Term Effect of Fiscal Policy on Local Development," CESifo Working Paper Series 9997, CESifo.
    17. Voth, Hans-Joachim & Xu, Guo, 2019. "Patronage for Productivity: Selection and Performance in the Age of Sail," CEPR Discussion Papers 13963, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Pedron, Sara & Maier, Werner & Peters, Annette & Linkohr, Birgit & Meisinger, Christine & Rathmann, Wolfgang & Eibich, Peter & Schwettmann, Lars, 2020. "The effect of retirement on biomedical and behavioral risk factors for cardiovascular and metabolic disease," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 38(C).
    19. Luca Bellodi & Massimo Morelli & Matia Vannoni, 2021. "A Costly Commitment: Populism, Government Performance, and the Quality of Bureaucracy," CESifo Working Paper Series 9470, CESifo.
    20. Chauvin, Juan Pablo & Tricaud, Clemence, 2022. "Gender and Electoral Incentives: Evidence from Crisis Response," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 12411, Inter-American Development Bank.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Replication; Robustness; Political Turnover; Regression Discontinuity; Quality of Public Services;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • H76 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Other Expenditure Categories
    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets
    • O17 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:zbw:i4rdps:39. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.i4replication.org/ .

    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.