Do Criminal Representatives Hinder or Improve Constituency Outcomes? Evidence from India

Nishith Prakash, Marc Rockmore and Yogesh Uppal ()

No 8452, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The recent increase in the number of criminally accused politicians elected to state assemblies has caused much furor in India. Despite the potentially important consequences and the widely divergent views, the implications of their elections to state legislative assemblies on constituency-level economic performance are unknown. Using a regression discontinuity design and data on the intensity of night lights in satellite imagery at the constituency level, our results suggest that the cost of electing criminally accused politicians on measures of economic activity is quite large. Using estimates of the elasticity of GDP to light, we find that the election of criminally accused candidates lead to roughly 5 percent lower GDP growth per year on average. These estimated costs increase for candidates with serious accusations, multiple accusations, and accusations regarding financial crimes. Our result survives variety of robustness checks.

Keywords: regression discontinuity; information disclosure; Indian politicians; growth; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D73 O12 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 63 pages
Date: 2014-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published - published as 'Do criminally accused politicians affect economic outcomes? Evidence from India' in: Journal of Development Economics, 2019, 141, 102370

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Working Paper: Do Criminal Representatives Hinder or Improve Constituency Outcomes? Evidence from India (2014)
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