IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eab/govern/22875.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Rain, ElectionS and MOney : The impact of voter turnout on distributive policy outcomes in japan

Author

Listed:
  • Yusaku Horichi

    (AJRC)

  • Jun Saito

Abstract

Does voter turnout affect policy outcomes? This long-standing question has been re-visited recently with close empirical scrutiny. These studies, however, commonly suffer from a problem of omitting variables correlated with both causal and outcome variables : specifically, immeasurable political interactions between politicians, organised groups, and individual voters. We address this problem by exploiting an instrument based on new data measuring the amount of rainfall on the voting day. It is a valid instrument not only because it is correlated with voter turnout and uncorrelated with politically relevant omitted variables, but also because it is expected to satisfy the assumption of homogeneous partial effects, which has not been carefully examined in previous studies that took advantage of instrumental variables. Using a large, municipality-level data set from Japan, we show that the turnout effect on the amounts of intergovernmental fiscal transfers is indeed significant, positive, and large.

Suggested Citation

  • Yusaku Horichi & Jun Saito, 2009. "Rain, ElectionS and MOney : The impact of voter turnout on distributive policy outcomes in japan," Governance Working Papers 22875, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:eab:govern:22875
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.eaber.org/node/22875
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mueller, Dennis C. & Stratmann, Thomas, 2003. "The economic effects of democratic participation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(9-10), pages 2129-2155, September.
    2. Dino Falaschetti, 2003. "Can Latent Groups Influence Policy Decisions? The Case of Telecommunications Policy," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(1), pages 83-105, April.
    3. Nichter, Simeon, 2008. "Vote Buying or Turnout Buying? Machine Politics and the Secret Ballot," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 102(1), pages 19-31, February.
    4. Fleck, Robert K, 1999. "The Value of the Vote: A Model and Test of the Effects of Turnout on Distributive Policy," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 37(4), pages 609-623, October.
    5. Knack, Steve, 1994. "Does Rain Help the Republicans? Theory and Evidence on Turnout and the Vote," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 79(1-2), pages 187-209, April.
    6. Paul S. Martin, 2003. "Voting's Rewards: Voter Turnout, Attentive Publics, and Congressional Allocation of Federal Money," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 47(1), pages 110-127, January.
    7. Gerber, Alan S. & Green, Donald P., 2000. "The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 94(3), pages 653-663, September.
    8. Douglas Staiger & James H. Stock, 1997. "Instrumental Variables Regression with Weak Instruments," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(3), pages 557-586, May.
    9. Stokes, Susan C., 2005. "Perverse Accountability: A Formal Model of Machine Politics with Evidence from Argentina," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 99(3), pages 315-325, August.
    10. Ansolabehere, Stephen & Gerber, Alan & Snyder, Jim, 2002. "Equal Votes, Equal Money: Court-Ordered Redistricting and Public Expenditures in the American States," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 96(4), pages 767-777, December.
    11. Alan Gerber & Donald Green, 2000. "The effects of canvassing, direct mail, and telephone contact on voter turnout: A field experiment," Natural Field Experiments 00248, The Field Experiments Website.
    12. Yusaku Horiuchi & Jun Saito, 2003. "Reapportionment and Redistribution: Consequences of Electoral Reform in Japan," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 47(4), pages 669-682, October.
    13. Ho, Daniel E. & Imai, Kosuke & King, Gary & Stuart, Elizabeth A., 2007. "Matching as Nonparametric Preprocessing for Reducing Model Dependence in Parametric Causal Inference," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(3), pages 199-236, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bonnier, Evelina & Poulsen, Jonas & Rogall, Thorsten & Stryjan, Miri, 2015. "Preparing for Genocide: Community Work in Rwanda," Working Paper Series 2015:1, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    2. Bonnier, Evelina & Poulsen, Jonas & Rogall, Thorsten & Stryjan, Miri, 2020. "Preparing for genocide: Quasi-experimental evidence from Rwanda," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    3. 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).
    4. Aggeborn, Linuz, 2016. "Voter turnout and the size of government," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 29-40.

    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. Paniagua, Victoria, 2022. "When clients vote for brokers: How elections improve public goods provision in urban slums," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    2. Yusaku Horichi & Jun Saito, 2009. "Rain, Elections and Money: The Impact of Voter Turnout on Distributive Policy Outcomes in Japan," Asia Pacific Economic Papers 379, Australia-Japan Research Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    3. León, Gianmarco, 2017. "Turnout, political preferences and information: Experimental evidence from Peru," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 56-71.
    4. Ali, Amin Masud & Savoia, Antonio, 2023. "Decentralisation or patronage: What determines government's allocation of development spending in a unitary country? Evidence from Bangladesh," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    5. Markus Reischmann, 2016. "Empirical Studies on Public Debt and Fiscal Transfers," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 63.
    6. Barone, Guglielmo & de Blasio, Guido, 2013. "Electoral rules and voter turnout," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 25-35.
    7. Kosuke Imai & Gary King & Elizabeth A. Stuart, 2008. "Misunderstandings between experimentalists and observationalists about causal inference," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 171(2), pages 481-502, April.
    8. Julia E. Tobias & Sudarno Sumarto & Habib Moody, "undated". "Assessing the Political Impacts of a Conditional Cash Transfer: Evidence from a Randomized Policy Experiment in Indonesia," Working Papers 262, Publications Department.
    9. David Dreyer Lassen, 2005. "The Effect of Information on Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(1), pages 103-118, January.
    10. Brett Gordon & Mitchell Lovett & Ron Shachar & Kevin Arceneaux & Sridhar Moorthy & Michael Peress & Akshay Rao & Subrata Sen & David Soberman & Oleg Urminsky, 2012. "Marketing and politics: Models, behavior, and policy implications," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 391-403, June.
    11. Kauder, Björn & Potrafke, Niklas & Reischmann, Markus, 2016. "Do politicians reward core supporters? Evidence from a discretionary grant program," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 39-56.
    12. Kauder, Björn & Björn, Kauder & Niklas, Potrafke & Markus, Reischmann, 2016. "Do politicians gratify core supporters? Evidence from a discretionary grant program," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145509, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    13. Gustavo J. Bobonis & Paul J. Gertler & Marco Gonzalez-Navarro & Simeon Nichter, 2022. "Vulnerability and Clientelism," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(11), pages 3627-3659, November.
    14. Nicole M. Mason & Thomas S. Jayne & Nicolas van de Walle, 2017. "The Political Economy of Fertilizer Subsidy Programs in Africa: Evidence from Zambia," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 99(3), pages 705-731.
    15. Julia Cage & Edgard Dewitte, 2021. "It Takes Money to Make MPs: Evidence from 150 Years of British Campaign Spending," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03384143, HAL.
    16. Grácio, Matilde & Vicente, Pedro C., 2021. "Information, get-out-the-vote messages, and peer influence: Causal effects on political behavior in Mozambique," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    17. Lisa M. George & Joel Waldfogel, 2006. "The New York Times and the Market for Local Newspapers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 435-447, March.
    18. Michael Haman, 2021. "Recall Elections: A Tool of Accountability? Evidence from Peru," Revista Desarrollo y Sociedad, Universidad de los Andes,Facultad de Economía, CEDE, vol. 87(3), March.
    19. Alan Gerber & Mitchell Hoffman & John Morgan & Collin Raymond, 2020. "One in a Million: Field Experiments on Perceived Closeness of the Election and Voter Turnout," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 287-325, July.
    20. Alberto Chong & Gianmarco León‐Ciliotta & Vivian Roza & Martín Valdivia & Gabriela Vega, 2019. "Urbanization Patterns, Information Diffusion, and Female Voting in Rural Paraguay," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 63(2), pages 323-341, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Election; Money; Rain; voter turnout; Japan; distributive policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H62 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Deficit; Surplus

    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:eab:govern:22875. 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: Shiro Armstrong (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eaberau.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.