Tying Your Enemy’s Hands in Close Races: The Politics of Federal Transfers in Brazil

Fernanda Brollo () and Tommaso Nannicini

No 5698, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper uses a quasi-experimental strategy to disclose utterly political reasons behind the allocation of intergovernmental transfers in a federal state. We apply a regression discontinuity design in close elections to identify the effect of political alignment on federal transfers to municipal governments in Brazil. We find that municipalities where the mayor is affiliated with the coalition of the Brazilian President receive larger (discretionary) infrastructure transfers by about 40% in pre-election years. This effect is mainly driven by the fact that the federal government penalizes municipalities run by mayors from the opposition coalition who won by a narrow margin, thereby tying their hands for the next election.

Keywords: political alignment; regression discontinuity; federal transfers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 D72 H77 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2011-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published - published in: American Political Science Review, 2012, 106 (4), 742-761

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp5698.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Tying Your Enemy's Hands in Close Races: The Politics of Federal Transfers in Brazil (2012)
Working Paper: Tying Your Enemy’s Hands in Close Races: The Politics of Federal Transfers in Brazil (2010)
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:iza:izadps:dp5698

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().