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Political Turnover Negatively Affects the Quality of Public Services: A Replication

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  • Gallegos, Sebastian

Abstract

The politically motivated replacement in local governments is a pervasive fact in our modern democracies. Whether it has causal effects on the quality of public services, such as education, is a critical question and yet understudied. This paper uses a regression discontinuity design (RDD) for close elections to replicate Akthari, Moreira and Trucco (2022) who find negative effects on the quality of public education in Brazil (.05-.08 standard deviations of lower test scores). I first reproduce these main results, finding minor computational differences that have no effect on the conclusions. I also show that the estimates for Brazil are in general robust to different specifications following Brodeur, Cook and Heyes (2020). Finally, I implement the same RDD framework now applied to Chilean administrative records to find null effects on test scores. Taken together, these results suggest that political turnover has weakly negative effects on service quality.

Suggested Citation

  • Gallegos, Sebastian, 2023. "Political Turnover Negatively Affects the Quality of Public Services: A Replication," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 796-818.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:212:y:2023:i:c:p:796-818
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2023.05.046
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sebastian Calonico & Matias D. Cattaneo & Max H. Farrell & Rocío Titiunik, 2019. "Regression Discontinuity Designs Using Covariates," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(3), pages 442-451, July.
    2. Abel Brodeur & Nikolai Cook & Anthony Heyes, 2020. "A Proposed Specification Check for p-Hacking," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 110, pages 66-69, May.
    3. Mitra Akhtari & Diana Moreira & Laura Trucco, 2022. "Political Turnover, Bureaucratic Turnover, and the Quality of Public Services," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(2), pages 442-493, February.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Replication; Robustness; Political turnover; Regression discontinuity; Quality of public services;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • H76 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Other Expenditure Categories
    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets
    • O17 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements

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