Successful Social Programs over Local Political Cycles

Yao Pan and Jing You

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We identify the effect of the relative timing of program introduction to local elections on service delivery. Exploring randomized provision of a credit program in China and variations in local political cycles, we find villages introducing the program before elections experience higher take-up rates, better targeting of the poor, and improved welfare, all of which are achieved without compromising the program’s financial sustainability. Examining implementation phase-by-phase shows better-designed program practices and greater efforts made by local politicians are plausible contributors to enhanced program impacts. These findings are consistent with incentives to implement well rather than buying votes under election pressure.

Keywords: Microfinance; Political Cycle; Heterogeneous Impact; Randomized Controlled Trial (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D14 D72 G21 I38 O13 O14 O16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-03-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mfd, nep-pol and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/98968/1/MPRA_paper_98968.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:pra:mprapa:98968

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().