Citation

Discussion Paper Details

Please find the details for DP7163 in an easy to copy and paste format below:

Full Details   |   Bibliographic Reference

Full Details

Title: Government Transfers and Political Support

Author(s): Marco Manacorda, Edward Miguel and Andrea Vigorito

Publication Date: February 2009

Keyword(s): Conditional cash transfers, redistributive politics, regression discontinuity and voting

Programme Area(s): Labour Economics and Public Economics

Abstract: We estimate the impact of a large anti-poverty program - the Uruguayan PANES - on political support for the government that implemented it. The program mainly consisted of a monthly cash transfer for a period of roughly two and half years. Using the discontinuity in program assignment based on a pre-treatment score, we find that beneficiary households are 21 to 28 percentage points more likely to favor the current government (relative to the previous government). Impacts on political support are larger among poorer households and for those near the center of the political spectrum, consistent with the probabilistic voting model in political economy. Effects persist after the cash transfer program ends. We estimate that the annual cost of increasing government political support by 1 percentage point is roughly 0.9% of annual government social expenditures.

For full details and related downloads, please visit: https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=7163

Bibliographic Reference

Manacorda, M, Miguel, E and Vigorito, A. 2009. 'Government Transfers and Political Support'. London, Centre for Economic Policy Research. https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=7163