عنوان

On Voting, Violence, and Health:

TL9sw9k0q2

انگلیسی

On Voting, Violence, and Health:

[Thesis]

Leon, Gianmarco

Essays on Political Economics and Development

Sadoulet, Elisabeth

UC Berkeley

2012

UC Berkeley

2012

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Below, I provide a more detailed summary of the main findings of each chapter in this thesis:In Chapter 1, ''Turnout, Political Preferences, and Information: Evidence from Perú'', I explore the role of electoral institutions that encourage citizens to vote on voter behavior. These institutions are widely used around the world, and yet little is known about the effects of such institutions on voter participation and the composition of the electorate. In this paper, I combine a field experiment with a change in Peruvian voting laws to identify the effect of fines for abstention on voting. Using the random variation in the fine for abstention and an objective measure of turnout at the individual level, I estimate the elasticity of voting with respect to cost to be -0.21. Consistent with the theoretical model presented in this essay, the reduction in turnout is driven by voters who (i) are in the center of the political spectrum, (ii) are less interested in politics, and (iii) hold less political information. However, voters who respond to changes in the cost of abstention do not have different preferences for policies than those who vote regardless of the cost. Further, involvement in politics, as measured by the decision to acquire political information, seems to be independent of the level of the fine. Additional results indicate that the reduction in the fine reduces the incidence of vote buying and increases the price paid for a vote. Chapter 2, ''Civil Conflict and Human Capital Accumulation: The Long Term Consequences of Political Violence in Perú'', analyzes the consequences of a long lasting civil conflict on human capital accumulation. In this chapter, I provide empirical evidence of thelong- and short-term effects of exposure to political violence on human capital accumulation. Using a novel data set that registers all the violent acts and fatalities during the Peruvian civil conflict, I exploit the variation in conflict location and birth cohorts to identify the effect of the civil war on educational attainment. Conditional on being exposed to violence, the average person accumulates 0.31 less years of education as an adult. In the short-term, the effects are stronger than in the long run; these results hold when comparing children within the same household. Further, children are able to catch up if they experience violence once they have already started their schooling cycle, while if they are affected earlier in life the effect persists in the long run. I explore the potential causal mechanisms, finding that supply shocks delay entrance to school but don't cause lower educational achievement in the long-run. On the demand side, suggestive evidence shows that the effect on mother's health status and the subsequent effect on child health is what drives the long-run results.In the third and final chapter of this dissertation, "Transportation Choices, Fatalism, and the Value of Statistical Life in Africa", joint work with Edward Miguel, we take a look at the role culture plays in determining the willigness to pay to avoid life thretening situations. Specifically, we exploit a unique transportation setting to estimate the value of a statistical life (VSL) in Africa.

The three essays conforming this thesis are representative pieces of my approach to analyzing the causes and consequences of economic underdevelopment. The overaching topic that ties together these essays is role that institutions and culture play in affecting specific behaviors that undermine development. The approach to the questions addressed in each essay is empirical, using data from Per