Winter is Coming: Early-life Experiences and Politicians’ Decisions

Shiqi Guo, Nan Gao and Pinghan Liang

The Economic Journal, 2024, vol. 134, issue 657, 295-321

Abstract: This paper traces the formation of politicians’ policy preferences to their early-life experiences. Based on biographical information on 2,806 county party secretaries in China and fiscal data from the 1,713 counties they governed during the 1998–2007 period, we find that a one-percentage-point increase in the early-life famine severity experienced by a county party secretary increases fiscal expenditures on agriculture by 0.8% and on social security subsidies by 1.1%. Agricultural taxes are reduced significantly, boosting grain production in the county party secretaries’ work counties. Our findings suggest that county party secretaries who experience early-life famine may develop preferences for food sufficiency and care for people suffering hardships.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ej/uead061 (application/pdf)
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:oup:econjl:v:134:y:2024:i:657:p:295-321.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Economic Journal is currently edited by Francesco Lippi

More articles in The Economic Journal from Royal Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press () and ().