Contribution to productivity or pork barrel? The two faces of infrastructure investment

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu Terms of use: Documents in Revised version October 2004Abstract This paper proposes a simultaneous-equation approach to the estimation of the contribution of transport infrastructure accumulation to regional growth. We model explicitly the political-economy process driving infrastructure investments; in doing so, we eliminate a potential source of bias in production-function estimates and generate testable hypotheses on the forces that shape infrastructure policy. Our empirical findings on a panel of France's regions over 1985-92 suggest that electoral concerns and influence activities were, indeed, significant determinants of the cross-regional allocation of transportation infrastructure investments. By contrast, we find little evidence of concern for the maximization of economic returns to infrastructure spending, even after controlling for pork-barrel.JEL classification numbers: D72, D78, 040

Do politicians reward core supporters? Evidence from a discretionary grant program

“…Empirical studies typically use the vote share of a party as a proxy for the Anderson and Tollison (1991), Ansolabehere et al (2002), Atlas et al (1995), and Knight (2002 and2004) for the United States, and Hodler and Raschky (2014) for developing countries. 3 On the effects of partisan alignment, see Worthington and Dollery (1998) for Australia, Brollo and Nannicini (2012) for Brazil, Cadot et al (2006) for France, Kemmerling and Stephan (2002) for Germany, Arulampalam et al (2009) for India, Bracco et al (2015) for Italy, Veiga and Pinho (2007) for Portugal, Curto-Grau et al (2014), Solé-Ollé (2013), and Solé-Ollé and Sorribas-Navarro (2008) for Spain, and Albouy (2013), Geys and Vermeir (2014), Gist and Hill (1984), Grossman (1994), and Levitt and Snyder (1995) for the United States. 4 On the personality traits of core supporters and swing voters, see Aidt and Rauh (2015).…”

“…4 On the personality traits of core supporters and swing voters, see Aidt and Rauh (2015). 5 See, e.g., Case (2001) for Albania, Litschig (2012) for Brasil, Cadot et al (2006) for France, Banful (2011) for Ghana, Arulampalam et al (2009) for India, Helland and Sørensen (2009) for Norway, Veiga and Pinho (2007) for Portugal, Solé-Ollé (2013) for Spain, Johansson (2003) for Sweden, and Wright (1974) for the United States. number of core supporters and find mixed evidence.…”

“…In Québec, electoral districts with many core supporters of the incumbent provincial government received more spending on roads (Joanis 2011). In France, transportation infrastructure investments were shown to be higher in districts with a large vote share of the incumbent national government (Cadot et al 2006). Studies on local investment programs in Swedish municipalities and infrastructure investments in Spanish regions did not, however, find evidence that governments reward core supporters (Dahlberg andJohansson 2002 andCastells andSolé-Ollé 2005).…”

Yes, Minister: The Impact of Decision-making Rules on Geographically Targeted Particularistic Spending

“…Despite these theoretical expectations, evidence of geographically-targeted spending (hereafter GTS) aimed at electoral gain has been found around the world regardless of electoral system. Australia (Denemark 2000), Brazil (Ames 2001(Ames , 1995, Canada (Milligan and Smart 2005), England (John, Ward, and Dowding 2004), France (Cadot, Röller, and Stephan 2006), Germany (Stratmann and Baur 2002), India (Dasgupta, Dhillon, and Dutta 2001), Japan (Thies 1998;Horiuchi and Saito 2003) to Scandinavia (Tavits 2009;Dahlberg and Johansson 2002) among others, all have geographically targeted spending. The absence of empirically-supported explanations of cross-country variation 1 would suggest the theoretical basis for geographically targeted spending is not fully developed.…”

Pork Barrel Politics in Postwar Italy, 1953-1994

“…Advances in data availability now permit extension of this line of research to other countries. Results identify patterns of partisan-political distributive politics in nations as diverse as Albania (Case 2001), Argentina (Calvo and Murillo 2004;Porto and Sanguinetti 2001), Australia (Denemark 2000;Worthington and Dollery 1998), Brazil (Ames 2001), Canada (Kneebone and McKenzie 2001), Colombia (Crisp and Ingall 2002) England (Ward and John 1999;John and Ward 2001), France (Cadot, Röller, and Stephan 2006), Germany (Stratmann and Baur 2002), India (Rao and Singh 2005), Japan (Horiuchi and Saito 2003), Mexico (Magaloni 2006, ch. 4), Peru (Schady 2000), Russia (Treisman 1996), South Korea (Kwon 2005), and Sweden (Dahlberg and Johansson 2002), as well as across Africa (Kasara 2007).…”