Vote-Buying and Growth

Hans Gersbach and Felix Mühe ()
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Felix Mühe: CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research at ETH Zurich, Switzerland

No 08/94, CER-ETH Economics working paper series from CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich

Abstract: Vote-buying is widely used by parties in developing countries to influence the outcome of elections. We examine the impact of vote-buying on growth. We consider a model with a poverty trap where redistribution can promote growth. We show that vote-buying contributes to the persistence of poverty as taxed wealthy people buy votes from poor people. We then show that there exists a democratic constitution that breaks vote buying and promotes growth. Such a constitution involves rotating agenda setting, a taxpayer-protection rule and repeated voting. The latter rule makes vote buying prohibitively costly.

Keywords: vote-buying; political economy; poverty traps; economic development; voting rules; repeated voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 I20 I30 O10 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2008-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
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Related works:
Journal Article: VOTE-BUYING AND GROWTH (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eth:wpswif:08-94

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