Discussion paper

DP13898 How Effective Are Monetary Incentives to Vote? Evidence from a Nationwide Policy

We combine two natural experiments, multiple empirical strategies and administrative data to study voters' response to marginal changes to the fi ne for electoral abstention in Peru. A smaller fi ne leads to a robust decrease in voter turnout. However, the drop in turnout caused by a full fi ne reduction is less than 20% the size of that caused by an exemption from compulsory voting, indicating the predominance of the non-monetary incentives provided by the mandate to vote. Additionally, almost 90% of the votes generated by a marginally larger fi ne are blank or invalid, lending support to the hypothesis of rational abstention. Higher demand for information and
larger long-run eff ects following an adjustment to the value of the fine point to the existence of informational frictions that limit adaptation to institutional changes.

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Citation

Leon-Ciliotta, G, L Martinez and M Gonzales (2019), ‘DP13898 How Effective Are Monetary Incentives to Vote? Evidence from a Nationwide Policy‘, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 13898. CEPR Press, Paris & London. https://cepr.org/publications/dp13898