IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/wodepe/v39y2025ics2452292925000529.html

The political consequences of resource scarcity: Targeted spending in a water-stressed democracy. A replication study of Mahadevan and Shenoy (Journal of Public Economics, 2023)

Author

Listed:
  • McWay, Ryan
  • Braaksma, Matthew

Abstract

Mahadevan and Shenoy (2023) assesses the use of state influence on funding for welfare programs in West Bengal for political targeting during periods of economic distress. Using a multidimensional regression discontinuity design, the authors find a misallocation of funding for a make-work program to support incumbent majority parties in electoral jurisdictions facing water-stress. This clientelism increased voting shares from farming communities using vote-buying strategies during a period of high unemployment (the dry season). We successfully computationally reproduce their results, and note some potential revisions to the replication packet to improve future replication. Further, we test the robustness replicability of the results through re-analyses modifying the definition of labor allocation, the definition of water-stress, as well as sub-analysis by voter turnout and voter population. We find that extreme water-stress jurisdictions are heavy recipients of reallocated labor, and find that labor is reallocated from part-time to full-time employment through the welfare program. Electoral victories from the ruling party successful implement vote-buying strategies in water-stressed electorates with high voter-turnout and large constituencies. This replication provides support for the internal validity of Mahadevan and Shenoy (2023)’s results and sheds a deeper light into the reallocation of welfare programs during periods of economic disaster.

Suggested Citation

  • McWay, Ryan & Braaksma, Matthew, 2025. "The political consequences of resource scarcity: Targeted spending in a water-stressed democracy. A replication study of Mahadevan and Shenoy (Journal of Public Economics, 2023)," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 39(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:wodepe:v:39:y:2025:i:c:s2452292925000529
    DOI: 10.1016/j.wdp.2025.100707
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452292925000529
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.wdp.2025.100707?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McWay, Ryan & Nchare, Karim & Sun, Pu, 2024. "Market Access and Quality Upgrading: Evidence from Four Field Experiments. A Replication Study of Bold et al. (American Economic Review, 2022)," Journal of Comments and Replications in Economics (JCRE), ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 3, pages 1-17.
    2. Anders Kjelsrud & Andreas Kotsadam & Ole Rogeberg, 2023. "Cooperative Property Rights and Development: Evidence from Land Reform in El Salvador: A Comment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 131(8), pages 2276-2285.
    3. Abel Brodeur & Mathias Lé & Marc Sangnier & Yanos Zylberberg, 2016. "Star Wars: The Empirics Strike Back," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(1), pages 1-32, January.
    4. Brodeur, Abel & Mikola, Derek & Cook, Nikolai & Brailey, Thomas & Briggs, Ryan & de Gendre, Alexandra & Dupraz, Yannick & Fiala, Lenka & Gabani, Jacopo & Gauriot, Romain & Haddad, Joanne & McWay, Ryan, 2024. "Mass Reproducibility and Replicability: A New Hope," I4R Discussion Paper Series 107, The Institute for Replication (I4R).
    5. 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.
    6. Zacharias Maniadis & Fabio Tufano & John A. List, 2017. "To Replicate or Not To Replicate? Exploring Reproducibility in Economics through the Lens of a Model and a Pilot Study," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(605), pages 209-235, October.
    7. Anna Dreber & Magnus Johannesson, 2025. "A framework for evaluating reproducibility and replicability in economics," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 63(2), pages 338-356, April.
    8. Nellis, Gareth & Weaver, Michael & Rosenzweig, Steven C., 2016. "Do Parties Matter for Ethnic Violence? Evidence From India," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 11(3), pages 249-277, October.
    9. 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).
    10. Colin F. Camerer & Anna Dreber & Felix Holzmeister & Teck-Hua Ho & Jürgen Huber & Magnus Johannesson & Michael Kirchler & Gideon Nave & Brian A. Nosek & Thomas Pfeiffer & Adam Altmejd & Nick Buttrick , 2018. "Evaluating the replicability of social science experiments in Nature and Science between 2010 and 2015," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 2(9), pages 637-644, September.
    11. repec:osf:socarx:4hmb6_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Mahadevan, Meera & Shenoy, Ajay, 2023. "The political consequences of resource scarcity: Targeted spending in a water-stressed democracy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 220(C).
    13. Zacharias Maniadis & Fabio Tufano, 2017. "The Research Reproducibility Crisis and Economics of Science," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(605), pages 200-208, October.
    14. Monya Baker, 2016. "1,500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility," Nature, Nature, vol. 533(7604), pages 452-454, May.
    15. Andrew C. Chang & Phillip Li, 2015. "Is Economics Research Replicable? Sixty Published Papers from Thirteen Journals Say \"Usually Not\"," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2015-83, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    16. Camerer, Colin & Dreber, Anna & Forsell, Eskil & Ho, Teck-Hua & Huber, Jurgen & Johannesson, Magnus & Kirchler, Michael & Almenberg, Johan & Altmejd, Adam & Chan, Taizan & Heikensten, Emma & Holzmeist, 2016. "Evaluating replicability of laboratory experiments in Economics," MPRA Paper 75461, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    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. McWay, Ryan & Braaksma, Matthew, 2025. "The Political Consequences of Resource Scarcity: Targeted Spending in a Water-Stressed Democracy. A Replication Study of Mahadevan and Shenoy," I4R Discussion Paper Series 231, The Institute for Replication (I4R).
    2. Balafoutas, Loukas & Celse, Jeremy & Karakostas, Alexandros & Umashev, Nicholas, 2025. "Incentives and the replication crisis in social sciences: A critical review of open science practices," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    3. Eszter Czibor & David Jimenez‐Gomez & John A. List, 2019. "The Dozen Things Experimental Economists Should Do (More of)," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(2), pages 371-432, October.
    4. repec:osf:osfxxx:mydzv_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Miloš Fišar & Ben Greiner & Christoph Huber & Elena Katok & Ali I. Ozkes, 2024. "Reproducibility in Management Science," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(3), pages 1343-1356, March.
    6. Hensel, Przemysław G., 2021. "Reproducibility and replicability crisis: How management compares to psychology and economics – A systematic review of literature," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 577-594.
    7. Vu, Patrick, 2024. "Why are replication rates so low?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 245(1).
    8. Igor Asanov & Christoph Buehren & Panagiota Zacharodimou, 2020. "The power of experiments: How big is your n?," MAGKS Papers on Economics 202032, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    9. Strømland, Eirik, 2019. "Preregistration and reproducibility," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 75(PA).
    10. McWay, Ryan, 2025. "Unintended Consequences of Lockdowns, COVID-19 and the Shadow Pandemic in India. A Reproduction Study of Ravindran and Shah," I4R Discussion Paper Series 230, The Institute for Replication (I4R).
    11. Stanley, T. D. & Doucouliagos, Chris, 2019. "Practical Significance, Meta-Analysis and the Credibility of Economics," IZA Discussion Papers 12458, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Deer, Lachlan & Adler, Susanne J. & Datta, Hannes & Mizik, Natalie & Sarstedt, Marko, 2025. "Toward open science in marketing research," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 212-233.
    13. Bergemann, Dirk & Ottaviani, Marco, 2021. "Information Markets and Nonmarkets," CEPR Discussion Papers 16459, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Muradchanian, Jasmine & Hoekstra, Rink & Kiers, Henk & van Ravenzwaaij, Don, 2020. "How Best to Quantify Replication Success? A Simulation Study on the Comparison of Replication Success Metrics," MetaArXiv wvdjf, Center for Open Science.
    15. Strømland, Eirik & Torsvik, Gaute, 2019. "Intuitive Prosociality: Heterogeneous Treatment Effects or False Positive?," OSF Preprints hrx2y, Center for Open Science.
    16. Abel Brodeur & Nikolai Cook & Carina Neisser, 2024. "p-Hacking, Data type and Data-Sharing Policy," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(659), pages 985-1018.
    17. Anna Dreber & Magnus Johannesson & Yifan Yang, 2024. "Selective reporting of placebo tests in top economics journals," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(3), pages 921-932, July.
    18. Fernando Hoces de la Guardia & Sean Grant & Edward Miguel, 2021. "A framework for open policy analysis," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 48(2), pages 154-163.
    19. Gary A. Hoover & Christian Hopp, 2017. "What Crisis? Taking Stock of Management Researchers' Experiences with and Views of Scholarly Misconduct," CESifo Working Paper Series 6611, CESifo.
    20. Guillaume Coqueret, 2023. "Forking paths in financial economics," Papers 2401.08606, arXiv.org.
    21. So, Tony, 2020. "Classroom experiments as a replication device," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 86(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H53 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • Q25 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Water

    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:eee:wodepe:v:39:y:2025:i:c:s2452292925000529. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/world-development-perspectives .

    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.