The objectives of this paper are twofold. First, we investigate whether politicians use resources from the federal budget as a strategy to maintain and expand their political capital. Second, we examine whether such a strategy is rewarded by voters who elect politicians who assist their...

Disparities in length of schooling between the largest Muslim minority in China, the Hui, and the Han majority are investigated. We use household data collected in Ningxia autonomous region in 2007. It is found that compared with Han persons of the same age and gender, Hui persons have shorter...

We use the nation-wide policy of randomly allocating village council headships to women to identify the impact of female political leadership on the governance of projects implemented under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in India. Using primary survey data, we find more program...

Political and economic transition is often blamed for Russia's 40% surge in deaths between 1990 and 1994 (the "Russian Mortality Crisis"). Highlighting that increases in mortality occurred primarily among alcohol related causes and among working-age men (the heaviest drinkers), this paper...

Do leader networks promote efficient intergovernmental contracts? We examine a groundbreaking policy in China where subprovincial governments freely traded land conversion quotas, and investigate the role of leader networks on the boundary between jurisdictions that embrace trade versus autarky....

We identify regional public investment priorities by studying the development of the water pipe system in the largest district in Poland. For this purpose, we take advantage of a major administrative re-form, implemented on 1 January 1999, which substantially changed the structure of Polish...

In order to study whether public pension systems displace private saving, we use the quasi-experimental variation in pension wealth created by Poland's 1999 pension reform. Using the 1997–2003 Polish Household Budget Surveys, we begin by estimating "difference-in-differences" regressions,...

This paper uses a randomized information intervention to shed light on whether poor understanding of social insurance, both the process of enrolling and costs and benefits, drives the relatively low rates of participation in urban health insurance and pension programs among China's rural-urban...

There is a clear and persistent inequality of bureaucratic employment between individuals with a bureaucrat parent and those without. Using the recent anti-corruption campaign in China as a quasi-experiment, we investigate how endeavors for counter-corruption affect inequality and potential...

Social science research has stressed the important role of religion in sustaining cooperation among non-kin. We contribute to this literature with a large-scale empirical study documenting the relationship between religion and cooperation. We analyze newly available, experimentally validated,...