IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/wbecrv/v32y2018i3p551-569..html

Preferential Resource Spending under an Employment Guarantee: The Political Economy of MGNREGS in Andhra Pradesh

Author

Listed:
  • Megan Sheahan
  • Yanyan Liu
  • Christopher B Barrett
  • Sudha Narayanan

Abstract

Are ostensibly demand-driven public works programs with high levels of safeguards nonetheless susceptible to political influence? We investigate this conjecture using expenditure data at the local level from India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Focusing on one state where accountability and transparency mechanisms have been employed and implementation efforts have been widely applauded, we find no evidence of partisan-influenced spending before the 2009 election and find that the political leaning of a mandal played only a small part in fund distribution after the 2009 election. Most variation in public works expenditures is explained by the observed needs of potential beneficiaries, as the scheme intended.

Suggested Citation

  • Megan Sheahan & Yanyan Liu & Christopher B Barrett & Sudha Narayanan, 2018. "Preferential Resource Spending under an Employment Guarantee: The Political Economy of MGNREGS in Andhra Pradesh," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 32(3), pages 551-569.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:wbecrv:v:32:y:2018:i:3:p:551-569.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/wber/lhw044
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zimmermann, Laura V, 2012. "Labor Market Impacts of a Large-Scale Public Works Program: Evidence from the Indian Employment Guarantee Scheme," IZA Discussion Papers 6858, IZA Network @ LISER.
    2. Wright, Gavin, 1974. "The Political Economy of New Deal Spending: An Econometric Analysis," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 56(1), pages 30-38, February.
    3. Cadot, Olivier & Roller, Lars-Hendrik & Stephan, Andreas, 2006. "Contribution to productivity or pork barrel? The two faces of infrastructure investment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(6-7), pages 1133-1153, August.
    4. Gupta, Bhanu & Mukhopadhyay, Abhiroop, 2016. "Local funds and political competition: Evidence from the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in India," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 14-30.
    5. Khera, Reetika (ed.), 2011. "The Battle for Employment Guarantee," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198070627.
    6. Khemani, Stuti, 2004. "Political cycles in a developing economy: effect of elections in the Indian States," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 125-154, February.
    7. Songqing Jin & Yanyan Liu, 2013. "Welfare and Poverty Impacts of India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme: Evidence from Andhra Pradesh," Working Papers id:5530, eSocialSciences.
    8. Paxson, Christina H, 1992. "Using Weather Variability to Estimate the Response of Savings to Transitory Income in Thailand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(1), pages 15-33, March.
    9. Aparajita Dasgupta, 2017. "Can the Major Public Works Policy Buffer Negative Shocks in Early Childhood? Evidence from Andhra Pradesh, India," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(4), pages 767-804.
    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. Das, Upasak & Maiorano, Diego, 2019. "Post-clientelistic initiatives in a patronage democracy: The distributive politics of India’s MGNREGA," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 239-252.
    2. Das, Ritanjan & Dey, Subhasish & Neogi, Ranjita, 2021. "Across the stolen Ponds: The political geography of social welfare in rural eastern India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    3. Chau, Nancy H. & Liu, Yanyan & Soundararajan, Vidhya, 2021. "Political activism as a determinant of strategic transfers: Evidence from an indian public works program," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    4. Devesh Kapur, 2020. "Why Does the Indian State Both Fail and Succeed?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(1), pages 31-54, Winter.
    5. Narayanan, Sudha & Das, Upasak & Liu, Yanyan & Barrett, Christopher B., 2017. "The “Discouraged Worker Effect” in Public Works Programs: Evidence from the MGNREGA in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 31-44.

    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. Sheahan, Megan & Liu, Yanyan & Barrett, Christopher B. & Narayanan, Sudha, 2014. "The political economy of MGNREGS spending in Andhra Pradesh," IFPRI discussion papers 1371, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    2. Sheahan, Megan & Liu, Yanyan & Narayanan, Sudha & Barrett, Christopher B., 2015. "Disaggregated labor supply implications of guaranteed employment in India," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 237345, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    3. Gonschorek, Gerrit J. & Schulze, Günther G. & Sjahrir, Bambang Suharnoko, 2018. "To the ones in need or the ones you need? The political economy of central discretionary grants − empirical evidence from Indonesia," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 240-260.
    4. Chau, Nancy H. & Liu, Yanyan & Soundararajan, Vidhya, 2017. "Political activism as a determinant of clientelistic transfers: Evidence from an Indian public works program," IFPRI discussion papers 1700, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    5. Chau, Nancy H. & Liu, Yanyan & Soundararajan, Vidhya, 2021. "Political activism as a determinant of strategic transfers: Evidence from an indian public works program," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    6. Bury, Yannick & Feld, Lars P. & Köhler, Ekkehard A., 2025. "Do party ties increase transfer receipts in cooperative federalism? – Evidence from Germany," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    7. Merfeld, Joshua D., 2019. "Spatially heterogeneous effects of a public works program," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 151-167.
    8. Markus Reischmann, 2016. "Empirical Studies on Public Debt and Fiscal Transfers," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 63, April.
    9. Josip Glaurdić & Vuk Vuković, 2017. "Granting votes: exposing the political bias of intergovernmental grants using the within-between specification for panel data," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 171(1), pages 223-241, April.
    10. Albert Solé-Ollé, 2013. "Inter-regional redistribution through infrastructure investment: tactical or programmatic?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 156(1), pages 229-252, July.
    11. Mushtaq Ahmad Malla, 2020. "MGNREGA in Kashmir: An Analysis of Labour Market Outcomes and Livelihood Security," Indian Journal of Human Development, , vol. 14(3), pages 424-446, December.
    12. Songqing Jin & Yanyan Liu, 2013. "Welfare and Poverty Impacts of India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme: Evidence from Andhra Pradesh," Working Papers id:5530, eSocialSciences.
    13. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Yannis Psycharis & Vassilis Tselios, 2016. "Politics and Investment: Examining the Territorial Allocation of Public Investment in Greece," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(7), pages 1097-1112, July.
    14. Sinduja Srinivasan, 2014. "Impact of Public Works on Household Occupational Choice Evidence from NREGS in India," Working Papers WR-1053, RAND Corporation.
    15. Picci, Lucio & Golden, Miriam, 2007. "Pork Barrel Politics in Postwar Italy, 1953–1994," MPRA Paper 5626, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Kemmerling, Achim & Stephan, Andreas, 2015. "Comparative political economy of regional transport infrastructure investment in Europe," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 227-239.
    17. Rongili Biswas & Sugata Marjit & Velayoudom Marimoutou, 2010. "Fiscal Federalism, State Lobbying And Discretionary Finance: Evidence From India," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(1), pages 68-91, March.
    18. Albert Solé-Ollé, 2009. "Inter-Regional redistribution through infrastructure investment: tactical or programmatic?," Working Papers 2009/32, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    19. Bhargava, Anil K., 2015. "NREGA's Impact on Agricultural Production, Labor, and Technology Adoption: New Evidence from a Detailed Indian Household-Plot Panel," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205695, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    20. repec:bri:cmpowp:13/317 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Merfeld, Joshua D, 2017. "Spatially Heterogeneous Effects of a Public Works Program," MPRA Paper 80630, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:oup:wbecrv:v:32:y:2018:i:3:p:551-569.. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wrldbus.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.