IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/flgsxx/v49y2023i5p1074-1109.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Fiscal impacts of electoral abstention: a study on the electorate biometric update in Brazilian municipalities

Author

Listed:
  • Giulia Giraldi Rocha Coelho
  • Henrique Augusto Campos Fernandez Hott
  • Sergio Naruhiko Sakurai

Abstract

Because electoral abstention may generate a difference between the preferences of general voters, i.e., those who are eligible to vote, and the preferences of effective voters, i.e., those who do vote, policies adopted by incumbents may differ according to differences in turnout rates across the electorate. The Brazilian biometric electorate update offers an innovative opportunity to explore exogenous variations in abstention rates, allowing us to verify its impact on public policies, especially local public expenditures. By combining propensity score matching, differences-in-differences and instrumental variables models, we find that the electorate biometric update decreased abstention rates in local elections in Brazil, which, in turn, changed local public spending composition towards expenditures on education. The remaining categories of public expenditures explored in this study, however, seem not to be affected by the change in the electorate composition.

Suggested Citation

  • Giulia Giraldi Rocha Coelho & Henrique Augusto Campos Fernandez Hott & Sergio Naruhiko Sakurai, 2023. "Fiscal impacts of electoral abstention: a study on the electorate biometric update in Brazilian municipalities," Local Government Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(5), pages 1074-1109, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:flgsxx:v:49:y:2023:i:5:p:1074-1109
    DOI: 10.1080/03003930.2023.2188448
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03003930.2023.2188448
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/03003930.2023.2188448?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    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:taf:flgsxx:v:49:y:2023:i:5:p:1074-1109. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/flgs .

    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.