Local Economic Impacts of Legislative Malapportionment

Masami Imai

No 2020-002, Wesleyan Economics Working Papers from Wesleyan University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Malapportionment is a highly contested, and yet common feature of electoral systems in many countries where more delegates are granted to rural and low-income regions. In Japan, an electoral reform equalized the geographical distribution of representation for the 1996 Lower House election. We use this episode as a quasi-experiment to investigate local economic impacts of malapportionment. We find that an additional representation expands local governments’ fiscal space. However, over-represented communities don’t benefit from fiscal windfalls due to crowding-out effects. It creates more construction/public sector jobs, but its positive effects are entirely offset by comparable losses of jobs in other sectors.

Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2020-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
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Journal Article: Local economic impacts of legislative malapportionment (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wes:weswpa:2020-002

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