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The impact of political representation on the provision of public goods and services

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  • Diloá Athias
  • Rodrigo Schneider

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the impact of political representation in Congress in Brazil on the local provision of public goods and services. Relying on a fixed effects model, plus the fact that the electoral system generates some random variation in the political representation across terms and municipalities, we find a positive and significant effect of political representation on health and school outcomes. For instance, in health, the results indicate that one additional seat in Congress representing a municipality decreases the share of low birth weight newborns by 0.06 percentage points. When looking at school outcomes, the share of schools with access to the Internet increases by 0.63 percentage points. Moreover, the results suggest that ‘pork‐barrel’ politics is one potential mechanism explaining this improvement in the provision of public goods and services.

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  • Diloá Athias & Rodrigo Schneider, 2021. "The impact of political representation on the provision of public goods and services," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 42(2), pages 367-381, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:fistud:v:42:y:2021:i:2:p:367-381
    DOI: 10.1111/1475-5890.12256
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    References listed on IDEAS

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