Showing 1 - 10 of 33
Forests accompany the cities we build. There are an estimated 5.5 billion urban trees in the United States. Globally, about 25 percent of urban land is covered by tree canopy. This study examines urban forests as a policy tool for air pollution mitigation. We study an afforestation program in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014337788
In this paper I explore the effect of patronage or machine' politics on government performance in American cities during the Progressive era. I use game theoretic models and an empirical analysis of spending and public goods provision during the first decade of the twentieth century in a cross...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012471832
This paper investigates if research findings change political leaders' beliefs and cause policy change. Collaborating with the National Confederation of Municipalities in Brazil, we work with 2,150 municipalities and the mayors who control their policies. We use experiments to measure mayors'...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012479891
James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston, used wasteful redistribution to his poor Irish constituents and incendiary rhetoric to encourage richer citizens to emigrate from Boston, thereby shaping the electorate in his favor. Boston as a consequence stagnated, but Curley kept winning...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012469772
This paper uses political reservations for women in India to study the impact of women's leadership on policy decisions. In 1998, one third of all leadership positions of Village Councils in West Bengal were randomly selected to be reserved for a woman: in these councils only women could be...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012470101
Compared to the federal government, the average citizen in the U.S. has far greater interaction with city governments, including policing, health services, zoning laws, utilities, schooling, and transportation. At the regional level, it is city governments that provide the infrastructure and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012533354
The downsides of density, including traffic congestion, contagious disease and crime, were common in Victorian London and classical Rome, just as they are today in Sao Paulo and Lagos. Our urban past provides lessons for developing world cities today. The first lesson, that I highlight, is that...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012533363
We evaluate the effect of a politician's age on political governance, reelection rates,and policies using data on Italian local governments. Our results suggest that younger politicians are more likely to behave strategically in response to election incentives: they increase spending and obtain...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012457689
This paper investigates the impact of elite capture on the allocation of targeted government welfare programs in Indonesia, using both a high-stakes field experiment that varied the extent of elite influence and non-experimental data on a variety of existing government transfer programs....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012459863
Staggered difference-in-differences designs are pervasive in policy evaluations but little is known about the mechanisms of policy diffusion: How and why do such policies spread across jurisdictions? In this study, we highlight the role of elections in policy diffusion in settings where...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014322828