Elections in China

Monica Martinez-Bravo, Gerard Padró i Miquel, Nancy Qian and Yang Yao

No 18101, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We examine the effects of introducing village elections on public goods expenditures, income distribution and land use in rural China. We construct a large panel data set of village administrative records to document the history of political reforms and economic policies for over two hundred villages. We exploit the staggered timing of the introduction of village elections to find that elections significantly increased public goods expenditure financed by villagers. In addition, we find that the introduction of elections caused a moderate decline in income inequality and likely reduced corruption. The results suggest that local officials are better controlled by local elections rather than by centrally managed bureaucratic monitoring.

JEL-codes: H11 O38 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-dev, nep-his, nep-pbe, nep-pol, nep-pub and nep-tra
Note: POL PE
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

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