IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ash/wpaper/117.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Political Cycles in Crop Residue Burning: Evidence from India

Author

Listed:
  • Meghna Agarwala

    (Ashoka University)

  • Shampa Bhattacharjee

    (Shiv Nadar University)

  • Aparajita Dasgupta

    (Ashoka University)

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between electoral incentives and crop residue burning (CRB) in India. Exploiting the asynchronous nature of state legislative assembly elections, we investigate whether the proximity to election timing influences CRB incidence. We construct a novel dataset combining 1-km resolution daily NASA remote sensing data on CRB with state electoral constituency information. Our findings reveal a significant increase in CRB before elections, suggesting political incentives play a role in its persistence. We provide evidence that this pre-electoral spike is unlikely to be driven by increased crop production, pointing instead to the relaxed law enforcement for political gain.

Suggested Citation

  • Meghna Agarwala & Shampa Bhattacharjee & Aparajita Dasgupta, 2024. "Political Cycles in Crop Residue Burning: Evidence from India," Working Papers 117, Ashoka University, Department of Economics, revised 01 Aug 2024.
    • Handle: RePEc:ash:wpaper:117
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dp.ashoka.edu.in/ash/wpaper/paper117_0.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shawn Cole, 2009. "Fixing Market Failures or Fixing Elections? Agricultural Credit in India," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 219-250, January.
    2. Akhmed Akhmedov & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2004. "Opportunistic Political Cycles: Test in a Young Democracy Setting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(4), pages 1301-1338.
    3. Agarwala, Meghna & Bhattacharjee, Shampa & Dasgupta, Aparajita, 2022. "Unintended consequences of Indian groundwater preservation law on crop residue burning," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    4. Fredriksson, Per G. & Neumayer, Eric, 2013. "Democracy and climate change policies: Is history important?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 11-19.
    5. Acheampong, Alex O. & Opoku, Eric Evans Osei & Dzator, Janet, 2022. "Does democracy really improve environmental quality? Empirical contribution to the environmental politics debate," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    6. B. Kelsey Jack & Seema Jayachandran & Namrata Kala & Rohini Pande, 2022. "Money (Not) to Burn: Payments for Ecosystem Services to Reduce Crop Residue Burning," NBER Working Papers 30690, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Pailler, Sharon, 2018. "Re-election incentives and deforestation cycles in the Brazilian Amazon," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 345-365.
    8. Antonio Cabrales & Esther Hauk, 2011. "The Quality of Political Institutions and the Curse of Natural Resources," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(551), pages 58-88, March.
    9. Ruoyu Lan & Sebastian D. Eastham & Tianjia Liu & Leslie K. Norford & Steven R. H. Barrett, 2022. "Air quality impacts of crop residue burning in India and mitigation alternatives," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-13, December.
    10. William D. Nordhaus, 1975. "The Political Business Cycle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 42(2), pages 169-190.
    11. Brender, Adi & Drazen, Allan, 2005. "Political budget cycles in new versus established democracies," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(7), pages 1271-1295, October.
    12. Galli, Emma & Rossi, Stefania P S, 2002. "Political Budget Cycles: The Case of the Western German Lander," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 110(3-4), pages 283-303, March.
    13. Muhammad Haseeb Raza & Muhammad Abid & Muhammad Faisal & Tingwu Yan & Shoaib Akhtar & K. M. Mehedi Adnan, 2022. "Environmental and Health Impacts of Crop Residue Burning: Scope of Sustainable Crop Residue Management Practices," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(8), pages 1-19, April.
    14. Jorge Hargrave & Krisztina Kis-Katos, 2013. "Economic Causes of Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon: A Panel Data Analysis for the 2000s," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 54(4), pages 471-494, April.
    15. Khemani, Stuti, 2004. "Political cycles in a developing economy: effect of elections in the Indian States," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 125-154, February.
    16. Baskaran, Thushyanthan & Min, Brian & Uppal, Yogesh, 2015. "Election cycles and electricity provision: Evidence from a quasi-experiment with Indian special elections," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 64-73.
    17. Bernauer, Thomas & Koubi, Vally, 2009. "Effects of political institutions on air quality," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(5), pages 1355-1365, March.
    18. Shampa Bhattacharjee, 2022. "The Timing of Elections and Neonatal Mortality: Evidence from India [Fiscal Transparency, Elections and Public Employment: Evidence from the OECD]," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 36(4), pages 972-998.
    19. Vijesh Krishna & Michael Euler & Hermanto Siregar & Matin Qaim, 2017. "Differential livelihood impacts of oil palm expansion in Indonesia," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 48(5), pages 639-653, September.
    20. Johan A. Oldekop & Katharine R. E. Sims & Birendra K. Karna & Mark J. Whittingham & Arun Agrawal, 2019. "Reductions in deforestation and poverty from decentralized forest management in Nepal," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 2(5), pages 421-428, May.
    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. Basistha, Ahana & Dhillon, Amrita & Chaudhuri, Arka Roy, 2024. "Elections and Rural Road Construction: Evidence from India," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 712, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    2. Cisneros, Elías & Kis-Katos, Krisztina & Nuryartono, Nunung, 2021. "Palm oil and the politics of deforestation in Indonesia," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    3. Baskaran, Thushyanthan & Brender, Adi & Blesse, Sebastian & Reingewertz, Yaniv, 2016. "Revenue decentralization, central oversight and the political budget cycle: Evidence from Israel," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 1-16.
    4. Rabia Nazir & Muhammad Nasir & Idrees Khawaja, 2022. "Political Budget Cycle: A Sub-National Evidence from Pakistan," Journal of Business Cycle Research, Springer;Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET), vol. 18(3), pages 343-367, November.
    5. Balaguer-Coll, Maria Teresa & Brun-Martos, María Isabel & Forte, Anabel & Tortosa-Ausina, Emili, 2015. "Local governments' re-election and its determinants: New evidence based on a Bayesian approach," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 94-108.
    6. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political Business Cycles 40 Years after Nordhaus," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-01291401, HAL.
    7. Foremny, Dirk & Freier, Ronny & Moessinger, Marc-Daniel & Yeter, Mustafa, 2014. "Overlapping political budget cycles in the legislative and the executive," ZEW Discussion Papers 14-099, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    8. Sever, Can & Yücel, Emekcan, 2022. "The effects of elections on macroprudential policy," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 507-533.
    9. García, Israel & Hayo, Bernd, 2021. "Political budget cycles revisited: Testing the signalling process," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    10. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political business cycles 40 years after Nordhaus," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 166(1), pages 235-259, January.
    11. Pailler, Sharon, 2018. "Re-election incentives and deforestation cycles in the Brazilian Amazon," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 345-365.
    12. Dirk Foremny & Ronny Freier & Marc-Daniel Moessinger & Mustafa Yeter, 2018. "Overlapping political budget cycles," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 177(1), pages 1-27, October.
    13. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political Business Cycles 40 Years after Nordhaus," Post-Print hal-01291401, HAL.
    14. Dalle Nogare, Chiara & Kauder, Björn, 2017. "Term limits for mayors and intergovernmental grants: Evidence from Italian cities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 1-11.
    15. Prakash, Nishith & Rockmore, Marc & Uppal, Yogesh, 2019. "Do criminally accused politicians affect economic outcomes? Evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    16. Toke S. Aidt & Francisco José Veiga & Linda Gonçalves Veiga, 2007. "Election Results and Opportunistic Policies: An Integrated Approach," NIPE Working Papers 24/2007, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    17. Aidt, Toke S. & Mooney, Graham, 2014. "Voting suffrage and the political budget cycle: Evidence from the London Metropolitan Boroughs 1902–1937," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 53-71.
    18. J. Stephen Ferris & Bharatee Bhusana Dash, 2019. "Expenditure visibility and voter memory: a compositional approach to the political budget cycle in Indian states, 1959–2012," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 129-157, June.
    19. Linda G. Veiga & Georgios Efthyvoulou & Atsuyoshi Morozumi, 2018. "Political Budget Cycles: Conditioning Factors and New Evidence," NIPE Working Papers 21/2018, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    20. Florian Dorn, 2021. "Elections and Government Efficiency," ifo Working Paper Series 363, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Crop Residue Burning;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ash:wpaper:117. 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: Ashoka University (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.ashoka.edu.in .

    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.