The Usefulness of Corruptible Elections

Loren Brandt () and Matthew Turner ()

Working Papers from University of Toronto, Department of Economics

Abstract: Using a sample of rural Chines villages which have recently been the subject of democratic reforms we look for the relationship between marginal changes in the democratic process and marginal changes in economic outcomes. We find that even very poorly conducted elections can have large incentive effects. That is, even corruptible elections provide leaders with strong incentives to act in the interests of their constituents. Our findings also allow us to rank the imiprotance of four possible election reforms which have attracted the attention of international observers and academic researchers.

Keywords: Elections; Corruption; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H0 H7 D7 Q0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: Written 2006-05-26

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Usefulness of Corruptible Elections (2003)
Working Paper: The Usefulness of Corruptible Elections (2003)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Toronto, Department of Economics
Address: 150 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario
Series data maintained by RePEc Maintainer ().