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Replication Data for: Government Spending and Voting Behavior

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

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Title Replication Data for: Government Spending and Voting Behavior
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/JFQC4N
 
Creator Hager, Anselm
Hilbig, Hanno
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description Does government spending on public goods affect the vote choice of citizens? On the one hand, voters have been characterized as ``fiscal conservatives'' who may turn toward conservative parties when government spending goes up. On the other hand, increased spending may signal that the economy is doing well, which makes progressive parties a more viable option. To adjudicate between both hypotheses, this paper draws on a natural experiment, which created exogenous variation in government spending. A discontinuity in the 2011 German census meant that some municipalities saw an unforeseen increase in budgets. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that the increase in budgets and subsequent spending on public goods benefited left-leaning parties, but had no effect on incumbent support. To parse out the causal channel, we rely on panel evidence and demonstrate that treated residents viewed their economic situation more favorably, which led them to espouse progressive parties.
 
Subject Social Sciences
Economic voting; state spending; redistribution; incumbency
 
Date 2024-01-29
 
Contributor Hilbig, Hanno