IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejpol/v9y2017i1p112-36.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gridlock: Ethnic Diversity in Government and the Provision of Public Goods

Author

Listed:
  • Brian Beach
  • Daniel B. Jones

Abstract

How does ethnic diversity in government impact public good provision? We construct a novel dataset linking the ethnicity of California city council candidates to election outcomes and expenditure decisions. Using a regression discontinuity approach, we find that increased diversity on the council leads to less spending on public goods. This is especially true in cities with high segregation and economic inequality. Those serving on councils that experience an increase in diversity also receive fewer votes when they run for reelection. These results point towards disagreement within the council generating lower spending.

Suggested Citation

  • Brian Beach & Daniel B. Jones, 2017. "Gridlock: Ethnic Diversity in Government and the Provision of Public Goods," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 112-136, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:9:y:2017:i:1:p:112-36
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/pol.20150394
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20150394
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=RLuWnm3ZDSq9e5gy4klFZwwim01qkjFY
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=25jjrp3L4QO8uFdFYxPlAH3c56vFyZpR
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=pD4Isi5np-PMtubhC618poOYeNJkVKAZ
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fernando Ferreira & Joseph Gyourko, 2009. "Do Political Parties Matter? Evidence from U.S. Cities," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(1), pages 399-422.
    2. Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano & Giovanni Peri, 2021. "The economic value of cultural diversity: evidence from US cities," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Firms and Workers in a Globalized World Larger Markets, Tougher Competition, chapter 7, pages 187-222, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Leah Boustan & Fernando Ferreira & Hernan Winkler & Eric M. Zolt, 2013. "The Effect of Rising Income Inequality on Taxation and Public Expenditures: Evidence from U.S. Municipalities and School Districts, 1970–2000," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(4), pages 1291-1302, October.
    4. David S. Lee & Enrico Moretti & Matthew J. Butler, 2004. "Do Voters Affect or Elect Policies? Evidence from the U. S. House," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(3), pages 807-859.
    5. Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano & Giovanni Peri, 2021. "Cities and cultures," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Firms and Workers in a Globalized World Larger Markets, Tougher Competition, chapter 6, pages 153-186, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    7. Alberto Alesina & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2011. "Segregation and the Quality of Government in a Cross Section of Countries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 1872-1911, August.
    8. Vogl, Tom S., 2014. "Race and the politics of close elections," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 101-113.
    9. Sebastian Calonico & Matias D. Cattaneo & Rocio Titiunik, 2014. "Robust Nonparametric Confidence Intervals for Regression‐Discontinuity Designs," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82, pages 2295-2326, November.
    10. Ferreira, Fernando & Gyourko, Joseph, 2014. "Does gender matter for political leadership? The case of U.S. mayors," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 24-39.
    11. McCrary, Justin, 2008. "Manipulation of the running variable in the regression discontinuity design: A density test," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 698-714, February.
    12. Martin J. Osborne & Al Slivinski, 1996. "A Model of Political Competition with Citizen-Candidates," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(1), pages 65-96.
    13. Gary Cox, 1984. "Electoral equilibrium in double member districts," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 443-451, January.
    14. Per Pettersson-Lidbom, 2008. "Do Parties Matter for Economic Outcomes? A Regression-Discontinuity Approach," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(5), pages 1037-1056, September.
    15. Andrew C. Eggers & Anthony Fowler & Jens Hainmueller & Andrew B. Hall & James M. Snyder, 2015. "On the Validity of the Regression Discontinuity Design for Estimating Electoral Effects: New Evidence from Over 40,000 Close Races," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(1), pages 259-274, January.
    16. Hahn, Jinyong & Todd, Petra & Van der Klaauw, Wilbert, 2001. "Identification and Estimation of Treatment Effects with a Regression-Discontinuity Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(1), pages 201-209, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gouvêa, Raphael & Girardi, Daniele, 2021. "Partisanship and local fiscal policy: Evidence from Brazilian cities," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    2. Brian Beach & Daniel B. Jones & Tate Twinam & Randall Walsh, 2018. "Minority Representation in Local Government," NBER Working Papers 25192, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Egidio Farina, 2018. "The impact of political and religious leaders on socio-economic outcomes," Economics PhD Theses 0218, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    4. Hill, Andrew J. & Jones, Daniel B., 2017. "Does partisan affiliation impact the distribution of spending? Evidence from state governments’ expenditures on education," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 58-77.
    5. Francisco Pino, 2014. "Is There Gender Bias Among Voters ?Evidence from the Chilean Congressional Elections," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2014-53, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    6. Lind, Jo Thori, 2020. "Rainy day politics. An instrumental variables approach to the effect of parties on political outcomes," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    7. Jung Sakong, 2021. "Identifying Taste-Based Discrimination: Effect of Black Electoral Victories on Racial Prejudice and Economic Gaps," Working Paper Series WP-2021-07, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    8. Mauricio Villamizar‐Villegas & Freddy A. Pinzon‐Puerto & Maria Alejandra Ruiz‐Sanchez, 2022. "A comprehensive history of regression discontinuity designs: An empirical survey of the last 60 years," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 1130-1178, September.
    9. Solé-Ollé, Albert & Viladecans-Marsal, Elisabet, 2013. "Do political parties matter for local land use policies?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 42-56.
    10. Brollo, Fernanda & Troiano, Ugo, 2016. "What happens when a woman wins an election? Evidence from close races in Brazil," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 28-45.
    11. Beach, Brian & Jones, Daniel B., 2016. "Business as usual: Politicians with business experience, government finances, and policy outcomes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 131(PA), pages 292-307.
    12. Daniele Girardi, 2018. "Political shocks and financial markets : regression-discontinuity evidence from national elections," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2018-08, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics.
    13. Louis-Philippe Beland & Sara Oloomi, 2017. "Party Affiliation And Public Spending: Evidence From U.S. Governors," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(2), pages 982-995, April.
    14. Benoît SCHMUTZ & Grégory VERDUGO, 2020. "Do Politicians Shape the Electorate ? Evidence from French Municipalities," Working Papers 2020-18, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics, revised 01 Apr 2021.
    15. Benoît LE MAUX & Kristýna DOSTÁLOVÁ & Fabio PADOVANO, 2017. "Ideology and Public Policies: A Quasi-Experimental Test of the Hypothesis that Left-Wing Governments Spend More," Economics Working Paper from Condorcet Center for political Economy at CREM-CNRS 2017-01-ccr, Condorcet Center for political Economy.
    16. Christian Dippel, 2019. "Political Parties Do Matter in U.S. Cities ... For Their Unfunded Pensions," NBER Working Papers 25601, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Makkar, Karan, 2023. "Defector Politicians and Economic Growth: Evidence from India," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    18. Carozzi, Felipe & Gago, Andrés, 2023. "Who promotes gender-sensitive policies?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 371-405.
    19. Solé-Ollé, Albert & Viladecans-Marsal, Elisabet, 2013. "Do political parties matter for local land use policies?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 42-56.
    20. Wenchi Wei, 2021. "State fiscal constraint and local overrides: a regression discontinuity design estimation of the fiscal effects," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 189(3), pages 347-373, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • H70 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - General
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population
    • R51 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Regional Government Analysis - - - Finance in Urban and Rural Economies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:9:y:2017:i:1:p:112-36. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.