IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-12-00752.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Legislator characteristics and legislative outcomes in India

Author

Listed:
  • Sitakanta Panda

    (Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi Enclave, Delhi-110007, India)

Abstract

We empirically test the prediction that the personal attributes of the legislators critically determine the legislative performance of a legislature in an Indian context. Analyzing the data on the Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) in the state of Tamil Nadu in the 2006-11 Assembly batch, we examine how the various personal characteristics of the legislators affect two indicators of legislative outcomes – their attendance in the Assembly session-days and the number of the questions asked by them on public policy. We find that the legislators who are more affluent attend significantly fewer Assembly sessions than their less rich colleagues. The legislators who are more affluent and more educated and those who belong to the opposition party ask significantly less questions in the Assembly sessions. Though the session attendance and the asked questions can be part of a larger set of legislative performance indicators; in presence of data constraints, we argue these two can substantially signal the lawmakers' performance. [Keywords: Legislator quality, legislative outcomes, India.] [JEL classification: D72, H11.]

Suggested Citation

  • Sitakanta Panda, 2012. "Legislator characteristics and legislative outcomes in India," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(4), pages 3401-3416.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-12-00752
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2012/Volume32/EB-12-V32-I4-P328.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Aysit Tansel & Fatma Bircan, 2003. "Private Tutoring Expenditures in Turkey," Working Papers 0333, Economic Research Forum, revised Nov 2003.
    2. Banerjee, Abhijit V. & Pande, Rohini, 2007. "Parochial Politics: Ethnic Preferences and Politician Corruption," Working Paper Series rwp07-031, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    3. Tansel, AysIt & Bircan, Fatma, 2006. "Demand for education in Turkey: A tobit analysis of private tutoring expenditures," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 303-313, June.
    4. Paul, Saumik & Denzau, Arthur, 2006. "Does Public Good Provision Determine Incumbent’s Fate? Evidence from India," MPRA Paper 11536, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Dutta, Bhaskar & Gupta, Poonam, 2012. "How Indian Voters Respond to Candidates with Criminal Charges: Evidence from the 2009 Lok Sabha Elections," Working Papers 12/109, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
    6. Joshua D. Clinton & John S. Lapinski, 2006. "Measuring Legislative Accomplishment, 1877–1994," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(1), pages 232-249, January.
    7. Raymond Fisman & Florian Schulz & Vikrant Vig, 2014. "The Private Returns to Public Office," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 122(4), pages 806-862.
    8. Timothy Besley & Torsten Persson & Daniel M. Sturm, 2010. "Political Competition, Policy and Growth: Theory and Evidence from the United States," CEP Discussion Papers dp1009, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    9. Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2005. "Do Leaders Matter? National Leadership and Growth Since World War II," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(3), pages 835-864.
    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. Saibal Ghosh, 2018. "An index of legislators’ performance: evidence from Indian parliamentary data," Journal of Social and Economic Development, Springer;Institute for Social and Economic Change, vol. 20(1), pages 129-151, April.

    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. Catalina Tejada & Eliana Ferrara & Henrik Kleven & Florian Blum & Oriana Bandiera & Michel Azulai, 2015. "State Effectiveness, Growth, and Development," Working Papers id:6668, eSocialSciences.
    2. Marcel Fafchamps & Julien Labonne, 2017. "Do Politicians’ Relatives Get Better Jobs? Evidence from Municipal Elections," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 33(2), pages 268-300.
    3. Nicolas GAVOILLE & Jean-Michel JOSSELIN & Fabio PADOVANO, 2014. "What do you know about your mayor? Voters’ information and jurisdiction size," Economics Working Paper from Condorcet Center for political Economy at CREM-CNRS 2014-01-ccr, Condorcet Center for political Economy, revised Aug 2015.
    4. Sabyasachi Das & Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay & Rajas Saroy, 2018. "Does Affirmative Action in Politics Hinder Performance? Evidence from India," Working Papers 1007, Ashoka University, Department of Economics.
    5. Galasso, Vincenzo & Nannicini, Tommaso, 2011. "Competing on Good Politicians," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 105(1), pages 79-99, February.
    6. Jan Fałkowski & Grażyna Bukowska, 2016. "Monopolizacja władzy a wyniki gospodarcze na poziomie Polski lokalnej," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 2, pages 91-120.
    7. Fernando M. Aragon & Ricardo Pique, 2015. "Does politician’s experience matter? Evidence from Peruvian local governments," Discussion Papers dp15-10, Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University.
    8. Prakash, Nishith & Rockmore, Marc & Uppal, Yogesh, 2019. "Do criminally accused politicians affect economic outcomes? Evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    9. Gavoille, Nicolas & Verschelde, Marijn, 2017. "Electoral competition and political selection: An analysis of the activity of French deputies, 1958–2012," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 180-195.
    10. Yu Bai & Yanjun Li, 2022. "Political tournaments and regional growth‐enhancing policies: Evidence from Chinese prefectures," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(5), pages 1358-1385, November.
    11. Gavoille, Nicolas & Verschelde, Marijn, 2017. "Electoral competition and political selection: An analysis of the activity of French deputies, 1958–2012," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 180-195.
    12. Mounir Mahmalat & Declan Curran, 2020. "Fractionalization and reform: a framework of political collaboration with application to Lebanon," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 187-214, June.
    13. Alessandro Fedele & Pierpaolo Giannoccolo, 2020. "Paying Politicians: Not Too Little, Not Too Much," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 87(346), pages 470-489, April.
    14. Ferraz, Claudio & Finan, Frederico S., 2008. "Motivating Politicians: The Impacts of Monetary Incentives on Quality and Performance," IZA Discussion Papers 3411, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Alvaro Forteza, 2013. "Political Selection with Pessimistic Voters," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 1313, Department of Economics - dECON.
    16. Das, Sabyasachi & Mukhopadhyay, Abhiroop & Saroy, Rajas, 2023. "Does affirmative action in politics hinder performance? Evidence from India," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 214(C), pages 370-405.
    17. Luca Bellodi & Massimo Morelli & Matia Vannoni, 2021. "The Costs of Populism for the Bureaucracy and Government Performance: Evidence from Italian Municipalities," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 21158, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    18. Yasushi Asako & Takeshi Iida & Tetsuya Matsubayashi & Michiko Ueda, 2014. "Dynastic Politicians: Theory and Evidence from Japan," Working Papers 1412, Waseda University, Faculty of Political Science and Economics.
    19. Federico Revelli, 2016. "Tax limits and local elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 166(1), pages 53-68, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Legislator quality; legislative performance; India.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
    • H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government

    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:ebl:ecbull:eb-12-00752. 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: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.