The Effects of Democratization on Public Goods and Redistribution: Evidence from China

Yang Yao, Monica Martinez-Bravo, Gerard Padro i Miquel () and Nancy Qia ()
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Nancy Qian

Working Papers from eSocialSciences

Abstract: This study investigates the effects of introducing elections on public goods and redistribution in rural China. A large and unique survey was collected to document the history of political reforms and economic policies and exploit the staggered timing of the introduction of elections for causal identification. It was found that elections significantly increase public goods expenditure. The increase corresponds to demand and is paralleled by an increase in public goods provision and local taxes. IT that elections cause significant income redistribution within villages. The results support the basic assumptions of recent theories of democratization. In addition, we show that the main mechanism underlying the effect of elections is increased leader incentives.

Keywords: Elections; Institutions; Democracy; China; Rural; Political; Economic; Reforms; Taxes; Public Goods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-06
Note: Institutional Papers
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.esocialsciences.org/Download/repecDownl ... &AId=5011&fref=repec

Related works:
Working Paper: The Effects of Democratization on Public Goods and Redistribution: Evidence from China (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:5011

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from eSocialSciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Padma Prakash ().