 Does government ideology shake or shape the public finances? Empirical evidence of disaster assistanceJeroen Klomp World Development, 2019, vol. 118, issue C, 118-127 Abstract: This study explores whether the public spending provided in response to a natural disaster is influenced by the political ideology of the incumbent government. We use a global panel of about 90 democratic countries. Political parties have different preferences regarding policies that redistribute income within a country after a natural disaster. The estimates of a dynamic panel model clearly indicate that left-wing governments allocate about 2.8 percent more public support per capita in the aftermath of a disaster than right-wing cabinets do. Besides, cabinets that consist of at least one nationalistic political party provide about 0.9 percent more disaster assistance than other coalitions. One explanation is that natural disasters may reinforce the feelings of voters related to the national identity and domestic solidarity. Finally, it turns out that the ideology effect is most visible in political systems with direct elections as it is easier to target affected voters in these systems. Keywords: Government ideology; Public spending; Natural disasters (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:118:y:2019:i:c:p:118-127 DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.02.013 Access Statistics for this article World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes More articles in World Development from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.