Program on Political Economy Seminar

Date: 

Thursday, September 26, 2019, 4:30pm to 5:45pm

Location: 

Hansen/Mason Room (3rd floor lounge), Littauer Center

Today's presenter: Gerard Padro-i-Miquel (Yale), "Rise and Fall of Local Elections in China: Evidence on the Autocrat’s Trade-off" (with Monica Martinez-Bravo, Nancy Qian, and Yang Yao)

Abstract: We propose a simple informational theory to explain why autocratic regimes introduce local elections. Because citizens have better information on local officials than the distant central government, delegation of authority via local elections improves selection and performance of local officials. However, local officials under elections have no incentive to implement unpopular centrally mandated policies. The model makes several predictions: i) elections pose a trade-off between performance and vertical control; ii) elections improve the selection of officials; and iii) an increase in bureaucratic capacity reduces the desirability of elections for the autocrat. To test (i) and (ii), we collect a large village-level panel dataset from rural China. Consistent with the model, we find that elections improve (weaken) the implementation of popular (unpopular) policies, and improve official selection. We provide a large body of qualitative and descriptive evidence to support (iii). In doing so, we shed light on why the Chinese government has systematically undermined village governments twenty years after they were introduced.

All interested faculty and students are invited to attend. 

Co-sponsored by FAS and IQSS, the Program on Political Economy (PE) supports research-related activities that integrate the study of economics and politics, whether by studying economic behavior in the political process or political behavior in the marketplace. In general, positive political economy is concerned with showing how observed differences among institutions affect political and economic outcomes in various social, economic, and political systems and how the institutions themselves change and develop in response to individual and collective beliefs, preferences, and strategies. 

rise_and_fall_of_local_elections_in_china_vdem_20180813_final.pdf836 KB