Politics, Information and the Urban Bias

Sumon Majumdar, Anandi Mani and Sharun Mukand

No 409, Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University from Department of Economics, Tufts University

Abstract: Governments in many developing countries skew public resources towards urban sectors, despite a majority of citizens residing in rural areas. This paper develops a novel political argument for this urban bias phenomenon in a framework where all voters, rural and urban, have equal voice, but di?er in their access to information. We argue that this di?erence is su?cient to give governments an incentive to ine?ciently overallocate resources towards urban areas. The bias is shown to worsen during adverse economic times, leading to increased migration. We also examine how voter informativeness a?ects e?ciency of the electoral process in weeding out incompetent governments.

Keywords: Urban Bias; Information; Heterogeneous Electorate; Migration. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H41 O18 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-pbe, nep-pol and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

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Journal Article: Politics, information and the urban bias (2004)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tuf:tuftec:0409

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