During the first wave of COVID-19 infections, Kerala, a state in southern India, successfully managed to contain the pandemic. As a result, the Kerala model of managing the COVID-19 pandemic was celebrated as a success across the globe. However, at the time of writing, it looks like the...

Do local institutions influence the nature of political clientelist exchange? We find a positive answer in the context of a village institution prevalent in Java since the Dutch colonial rule, where democratically elected village heads receive usufruct rights over a piece of communal village...

There are sound theoretical reasons to expect clientelism to suppress economic growth: politicians who garner support by offering employment to voters and grassroots party members can do so more effectively when the voters' participation constraint is met with low wages. Hence, clientelism can...

Past research has provided evidence of clientelistic politics in delivery of programme benefits by local governments, or gram panchayats (GPs), and manipulation of GP programme budgets by legislators and elected officials at upper tiers in West Bengal, India. Using household panel survey data...

This paper argues that new computer, smartphone, and universal ID technologies are reducing the incentives for political clientelism in the delivery of social programmes in India, especially by allowing party leaders to bypass local brokers to credit-claim for better service delivery and...

Where does the money come from to buy votes? We argue that an important source of funds for vote-buying comes from 'contract clientelism', or the provision of public contracts to private firms in exchange for campaign donations. Using quantitative data on Colombian infrastructure contracts, we...

Does clientelism perpetuate the weak state capacity that characterizes many young democracies? Prior work explains that clientelist parties skew public spending to private goods and under-supply public goods. Building on these insights, this article argues that clientelism creates a bureaucratic...

Are candidates who hand out clientelistic goods at election time less likely to provide services once they take office? This paper examines the poor's expectations of future service provision by candidates who hand out money and other goods versus those who do not. We hypothesize that the poor's...

Why are the poor susceptible to clientelism, and what factors shield them from the influence of vote buying? We explore the role of both formal and informal social networks in shaping the likelihood of being targeted with private inducements. We argue that when the poor lack access to formal...

In the Philippine political dynamics, political patronage has been observed, especially in the local government units. The study’s objectives include determining the different forms of benefits that political patrons offer as observed by local voters, the reasons behind their participation,...

This paper explores the labor market returns to working on a victorious political campaign. Using unique administrative data from Brazil, we track the earnings and employment of campaign workers before and after close elections spanning nearly 20 years. We identify sizable returns to working for...

We examine the effect of elite connections on CEO pay and turnover decisions, using a large sample of Chinese listed firms. Our findings show that CEOs of private listed firms benefit from significantly higher salaries (a 25% increase), consistent with the resource dependence theory, whereas the...

We study the impact of hiring former government officials on firms’ tax evasion using a unique administrative employee-employer matched data from Moscow, Russia. We find that firms hiring former top-level city government officials experience increased tax evasion: reported salaries of the...

This paper proposes a preliminary economic model of political clientelism and corruption in developing countries with weak rule of law. It explains why this corruption is often chronic and persistent, and further examines its impact on fragility, conflict, and violence. The basic model is built...

In this paper, we study the extent to which ministers engage in regional favoritism. We are the first to provide a comprehensive analysis of a larger set of the governing elite, not just focusing on the primary leader. We manually collect birthplaces of this governing elite globally. Combining...

The interdependence of the State and business is widely recognised across many disciplines and frameworks. This paper examines the State-capital nexus in India during the neoliberal era, focusing on how the State has facilitated accelerated primitive accumulation for large capital by selectively...

In this paper we explore the role of regional connections with a national leader as a pull factor of internal migration in Benin by exploiting granular census data over the period 1991-2013. The empirical analysis is based on a gravity model of migration and utilizes a PPML estimator....

This paper provides a perspective on the political economy of crony capitalism and corruption in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Syria, and Yemen, severely affected by the Arap Spring, to propose that they triggered the uprisings. The crony capitalism in Egypt shows military dominance and its...

Outsourcing public services to private providers is heralded for increasing government efficiency. Yet, outsourcing also offers opportunities to circumvent employment regulations in the public sector. The praised flexibility that private contractors have to hire employees can also be used to...

Skills utilization is an important factor affecting labor productivity and job satisfaction. This paper examines the effects of skills mismatch, nepotism, and gender discrimination on wages and job satisfaction in MENA workplaces. Gender discrimination implies social costs for firms due to...

This paper examines the effect of political favoritism on economic inequality in the short run and political polarization in the long run. We exploit the sudden death of an authoritarian leader - President Chiang Ching-Kuo of Taiwan - in 1988 to generate plausibly exogenous variation in...

During the first wave of COVID-19 infections, Kerala, a state in southern India, successfully managed to contain the pandemic. As a result, the Kerala model of managing the COVID-19 pandemic was celebrated as a success across the globe. However, at the time of writing, it looks like the...

Purpose: This paper aims to contribute to understanding of the effects of active political engagement in port-of-entry jobs and employment pathways for graduate students. The data are derived from a structured survey of a small local labour market where political clientelism is pronounced due to...

Purpose: This paper investigates the factors responsible for the emergence of different arrangements of state-society relations. Being concerned with the relations related to the industrial sector, this study focuses more on state-business-labor relations (SBLRs), especially on power dynamics...

This research examines the relationship between politically connected independent commissioners and independent directors on firm performance. The sample are all listed companies on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) from 2010-2017. In this study, we employ the ordinary least squares (OLS)...

The paper estimates the political connection premium for Italian cities tracked during the second half of the 1900s, when the role of the state in the economy was very widespread. It leverages the peculiar features of the gridlocked political landscape in place between the end of World War II...

Democratic accountability posits that the incumbent parties are held accountable for their performances in office and can be voted out as the ultimate sanction. However, poorly performing parties continue to win elections mainly in developing countries and this trend might facilitate democratic...

We study the causes and consequences of patronage in Brazilian cities since the country’s re-democratization. Local winning political coalitions increase their shares of civil servant workers and wages by 3-4 percentage points during a mayoral term, independent of their ideology. Over five...

Is the strength of favoritism from social ties gender-dependent? Collecting election data of the most distinguished Chinese scientific academies over a decade, we find favoritism from some social connections, such as sharing a hometown, college, or employer, between recruiters and candidates can...