More political representation, more economic development? Evidence from Turkey

Jie Zhang

Public Choice, 2021, vol. 187, issue 3, No 2, 275-299

Abstract: Abstract I investigate the effect of political representation on local economic development, as measured by nighttime light intensity (NTLI), in Turkey between 1996 and 2013 (i.e., between legislative term 20 and 24). Parliamentary seats are apportioned by a rule that generates randomness in the extent of provincial representation in the Turkish Parliament. By exploiting that exogenous variation, I estimate the impact of one additional Member of Parliament (MP) representing a province on that province’s economic growth. Specifically, I show that an extra MP increases the NTLI of her province by 1% in a given year, which corresponds to an annual increase of 0.095% in real GDP. The increase likely is driven by MPs who are members of the government party. By investigating the mechanisms, I find that additional provincial representation increases the number of discussions of that particular province in public parliamentary meetings, as well as the funds allocated to that province. Taken together, my results suggest that some of Turkey’s regional economic growth is associated with legislative representation.

Keywords: Political representation; Apportionment rule; Nighttime light intensity; Mentions; Economic development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 O12 P48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11127-019-00773-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:pubcho:v:187:y:2021:i:3:d:10.1007_s11127-019-00773-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11127-019-00773-6

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().