Non-democratic regimes and Elite Capture: Evidence from the Brazilian Dictatorship

Luis N. Meloni ()

No 2015_41, Working Papers, Department of Economics from University of São Paulo (FEA-USP)

Abstract: This paper investigates the existence of elite capture at local levels of government in the context of the Brazilian dictatorship, a particular interesting context because during the dictatorship the mayors of some municipalities were appointed by the regime, while others were elected directly. This is done comparing measures of inequality after redemocratization between municipalities that had appointed mayors with (a subset of) municipalities where mayors were elected directly. To overcome the issue of the selection of municipalities, a combination of geographic regression discontinuity (GRD) design with matching techniques is employed, relying on the hypothesis that the main source of selection is related to the geographic characteristics of the municipalities. The main results indicate income inequality increased more in municipalities that had mayors appointed by the regime and that was mainly due to an increase in the share of income earned by the richest. Although lack of more detailed data does not allow to explore the channels through which this wealth concentration occurred, the results are consistent with the hypothesis of elite capture.

Keywords: Political Economy; Institutions; Inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D02 D63 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-11-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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