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Replication Data for: "A Sectoral Approach to the Politics of State Aid in the European Union: an Analysis of the European Automotive Industry"

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Replication Data for: "A Sectoral Approach to the Politics of State Aid in the European Union: an Analysis of the European Automotive Industry"
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/EJIJKF
 
Creator Schito, Marco
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description A growing body of scholarship has been focusing on the determinants of subsidy spending.
Yet, this literature has mostly overlooked sectoral approaches to explain variation in aid
allocations, which can provide useful insights about state-business relations that macroanalyses
cannot. The article explores the political determinants of state aid in a key sector
of the European economy, the automotive industry, which represents a crucial test case to
analyse the relationship between big firms and the state. The article argues that there are
two mechanisms through which governments may choose to allocate aid: achievement of
policy goals and electoral competition. The resulting hypotheses are tested on an original
dataset of over 120 state aid measures in 16 member states of the European Union (EU)
where an automotive industry is present between 1992 and 2011. The results show that
aid allocations are seldom found to be determined by a government’s preferences over its
policy objectives. Instead, electoral rules such as the cultivation of a personal reputation by
distribution of targeted benefits to a constituency may help legislators in their chances of
being re-elected. The article concludes with limitations of the present study and suggestions
for future research.
 
Subject Social Sciences
State aid
Automotive industry
Electoral politics
Sectoral analysis
Zero-inflated models
 
Contributor Schito, Marco