IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejapp/v13y2021i2p1-51.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cell Phone Access and Election Fraud: Evidence from a Spatial Regression Discontinuity Design in Afghanistan

Author

Listed:
  • Robert M. Gonzalez

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of cell phone access on election fraud. I combine cell phone coverage maps with the location of polling centers during the 2009 Afghan presidential election to pinpoint which centers were exposed to coverage. Results from a spatial regression discontinuity design along the two-dimensional coverage boundary suggest that coverage deters corrupt behavior. Polling centers just inside coverage report a drop in the share of fraudulent votes of 4 percentage points, while the likelihood of a fraudulent station decreases by 8 percentage points. Analyses of the effect of coverage on citizen participation in election monitoring, election-related insurgent violence, and the tribal composition of villages suggest that the observed declines in fraud are likely attributed to cell phone access strengthening social monitoring capacity.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert M. Gonzalez, 2021. "Cell Phone Access and Election Fraud: Evidence from a Spatial Regression Discontinuity Design in Afghanistan," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 1-51, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejapp:v:13:y:2021:i:2:p:1-51
    DOI: 10.1257/app.20190443
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20190443
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E118467V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20190443.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20190443.ds
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/app.20190443?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Matias D. Cattaneo & Michael Jansson & Xinwei Ma, 2020. "Simple Local Polynomial Density Estimators," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 115(531), pages 1449-1455, July.
    2. Sebastian Calonico & Matias D. Cattaneo & Rocio Titiunik, 2014. "Robust Nonparametric Confidence Intervals for Regression‐Discontinuity Designs," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82, pages 2295-2326, November.
    3. repec:bla:scandj:v:96:y:1994:i:2:p:219-39 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Eddie Dekel & Matthew O. Jackson & Asher Wolinsky, 2008. "Vote Buying: General Elections," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(2), pages 351-380, April.
    5. Luke N. Condra & James D. Long & Andrew C. Shaver & Austin L. Wright, 2018. "The Logic of Insurgent Electoral Violence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(11), pages 3199-3231, November.
    6. Conley, T. G., 1999. "GMM estimation with cross sectional dependence," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 1-45, September.
    7. Matias D. Cattaneo & Michael Jansson & Xinwei Ma, 2018. "Manipulation testing based on density discontinuity," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 18(1), pages 234-261, March.
    8. Weidmann, Nils B. & Callen, Michael, 2013. "Violence and Election Fraud: Evidence from Afghanistan," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 43(1), pages 53-75, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Blakeslee, David & Dar, Aaditya & Fishman, Ram & Malik, Samreen & Pellegrina, Heitor S. & Bagavathinathan, Karan Singh, 2023. "Irrigation and the spatial pattern of local economic development in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    2. Mensah,Justice Tei & Hirfrfot,Kibrom Tafere & Abay,Kibrom A., 2022. "Saving Lives through Technology : Mobile Phones and Infant Mortality," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9978, The World Bank.
    3. Mensah,Justice Tei, 2023. "Mobile Phones and Local Economic Development : A Global Evidence," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10526, The World Bank.
    4. Oeindrila Dube & Joshua Blumenstock & Michael Callen, 2022. "Measuring Religion from Behavior: Climate Shocks and Religious Adherence in Afghanistan," NBER Working Papers 30694, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Cohle, Zachary & Ortega, Alberto, 2022. "Life of the party: The polarizing effect of foreign direct investment," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    6. Gonzalez, Robert & Maffioli, Elisa M., 2024. "Is the phone mightier than the virus? Cellphone access and epidemic containment efforts," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    7. Süß, Karolin, 2023. "Long-term effects of historical inheritance customs on household formation and gender disparities," Ruhr Economic Papers 1038, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    8. repec:zbw:itse22:265632 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Roodman, David, 2024. "The Arrival of Fast Internet and Employment in Africa - Comment," I4R Discussion Paper Series 148, The Institute for Replication (I4R).
    10. Peter H. Egger & Yulong Wang, 2025. "Estimating Export-productivity Cutoff Contours with Profit Data: A Novel Threshold Estimation Approach," Papers 2502.03406, arXiv.org.
    11. Justice Tei Mensah & Nouhoum Traore, 2024. "Infrastructure Quality and FDI Inflows: Evidence from the Arrival of High-Speed Internet in Africa," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 38(1), pages 1-23.
    12. Thomas A. Fackler & Oliver Falck & Simon Krause & Thomas Fackler, 2024. "The Value of Connectivity: High-Speed Broadband Internet and Real Estate Prices," CESifo Working Paper Series 11595, CESifo.

    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. Luis R. Martinez & Jonas Jessen & Guo Xu, 2023. "A Glimpse of Freedom: Allied Occupation and Political Resistance in East Germany," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(1), pages 68-106, January.
    2. Gonzalez, Robert & Maffioli, Elisa M., 2024. "Is the phone mightier than the virus? Cellphone access and epidemic containment efforts," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    3. Bhalotra, Sonia & Britto, Diogo G. C. & Pinotti, Paolo & Sampaio, Breno, 2021. "Job Displacement, Unemployment Benefits and Domestic Violence," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1363, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    4. David M. Brasington, 2022. "Cutting Funding for Police Protection: The Consequences for the Size of Newly-Constructed Housing," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 65(4), pages 549-571, November.
    5. Gurgand, Marc & Lorenceau, Adrien & Mélonio, Thomas, 2023. "Student loans: Credit constraints and higher education in South Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    6. Britto, Diogo & Melo, Caique & Sampaio, Breno, 2022. "The Kids Aren't Alright: Parental Job Loss and Children's Outcomes Within and Beyond Schools," CEPR Discussion Papers 17562, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Britto, Diogo & Rocha, Roberto Hsu & Pinotti, Paolo & Sampaio, Breno, 2024. "Small Children, Big Problems: Childbirth and Crime," IZA Discussion Papers 16910, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Ilciukas, Julius, 2023. "Fertility and parental retirement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
    9. Casaburi, Lorenzo & Caprettini, Bruno & Venturini, Miriam, 2021. "Redistribution, Voting and Clientelism: Evidence from the Italian Land Reform," CEPR Discussion Papers 15679, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Julieta Vera Rueda, 2024. "Perception, investments, and newborn's outcomes: the perception of a newborn's health and its influence on parental investment and health outcomes: Evidence from ELFE cohort," PSE Working Papers halshs-04840623, HAL.
    11. Blaise Melly & Rafael Lalive, 2020. "Estimation, Inference, and Interpretation in the Regression Discontinuity Design," Diskussionsschriften dp2016, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    12. Baldomero-Quintana, Luis & Woo-Mora, L. Guillermo & De la Rosa-Ramos, Enrique, 2025. "Infrastructures of race? Colonial indigenous segregation and contemporary land values," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    13. Zhuang Hao & Huihui Cheng & Till Bärnighausen & Simiao Chen, 2024. "The effects of parental retirement on adult children's health: Evidence from China," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(1), pages 12-20, January.
    14. Bonilla, Sade, 2020. "The dropout effects of career pathways: Evidence from California," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    15. Kämpfen, F.; & Gómez-Olivé, X.; & O’Donnell, O.; & Riumallo Herl, C.;, 2023. "Effectiveness of Population-Based Hypertension Screening: A Multidimensional Regression Discontinuity Design," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 23/15, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    16. Burgherr, David, 2022. "Behavioral Responses to a Pension Savings Mandate : Quasi-experimental Evidence from Swiss Tax Data," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 645, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    17. de Gendre, Alexandra & Lynch, John & Meunier, Aurélie & Pilkington, Rhiannon & Schurer, Stefanie, 2021. "Child Health and Parental Responses to an Unconditional Cash Transfer at Birth," IZA Discussion Papers 14693, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Mohamed Abouaziza, 2022. "Farmer constraints and relational contracts: evidence from agricultural value chains in East Africa," Economics PhD Theses 0122, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    19. David M. Brasington, 2022. "Local economic growth and local government investment in parks and recreation, or five cheese pizzas for $2.6 million," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(1), pages 81-95, January.
    20. Deng, Guoying & Du, Pengcheng & Hernandez, Manuel A. & Xu, Shu, 2024. "Corporate taxes and labor market informality evidence from China," IFPRI discussion papers 2244, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • K16 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Election Law
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • O17 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    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:aea:aejapp:v:13:y:2021:i:2:p:1-51. 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.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.