Fixing Market Failures or Fixing Elections? Agricultural Credit in India
نویسنده
چکیده
This paper integrates theories of political budget cycles with theories of tactical electoral redistribution to test for political capture in a novel way. Studying banks in India, I nd that government-owned bank lending tracks the electoral cycle, with agricultural credit increasing by 5-10 percentage points in an election year. There is signi cant cross-sectional targeting, with large increases in districts in which the election is particularly close. This targeting does not occur in non-election years, or in private bank lending. I show capture is costly: elections a¤ect loan repayment, and election year credit booms do not measurably a¤ect agricultural output. Finance Unit, Harvard Business School. 25 Harvard Way, Boston, MA, 02163, [email protected]. I thank Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duo, and Sendhil Mullainathan for guidance, and Abhiman Das, R.B. Barman and especially the Reserve Bank of India for substantial support and assistance. I also thank Abhiman Das for performing calculations on disaggregated data at the Reserve Bank of India. In addition, I thank Victor Chernozhukov, Ivan Fernandez-Val, Francesco Franco, Andrew Healy, Andrei Levchenko, Rema Hanna, Petia Topalova, and participants various seminars and workshops, the editor, Thomas Lemieux, and two referees for comments. Gautam Bastian and Samantha Bastian provided excellent research assistance. I am grateful for nancial support from a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and Harvard Business Schools Division of Research and Faculty Development. Errors are my own.
منابع مشابه
Complement-fixing antibodies in cattle experimentally infected with Theileria annulata or vaccinated with tissue cultures
متن کامل
Factors Affecting Groundnut Market Outlet Choice in Moisture Stress Area of Babile District, Eastern Ethiopia: Multivariate Probit Approach
The groundnut plant has the ability to survive in areas of low rainfall because it is a legume and it increases soil fertility by fixing nitrogen in the soil. The study area is known by erratic and uneven rainfall while groundnut is the main cash crop in the area. The study identified the groundnut market outlets, factor affecting groundnut market outlet choice and identifies farm level women r...
متن کاملUse of nitrogen-fixing bacteria to improve agricultural productivity
Nitrogen-fixing, plant-growth promoting bacteria are arguably the biotechnological tool of highest potential to improve agricultural productivity in short term. Nitrogen fixation and phytohormone production by these bacteria have been considered the most important factors for plant growth promotion. However, the underlying mechanisms responsible for productivity increases by associative bacteri...
متن کاملOn the fixed number of graphs
A set of vertices $S$ of a graph $G$ is called a fixing set of $G$, if only the trivial automorphism of $G$ fixes every vertex in $S$. The fixing number of a graph is the smallest cardinality of a fixing set. The fixed number of a graph $G$ is the minimum $k$, such that every $k$-set of vertices of $G$ is a fixing set of $G$. A graph $G$ is called a $k$-fixed graph, if its fix...
متن کاملEffect of Bio-Fertilizers Containing Nitrogen and Phosphorus Fixing Bacteria on Yield and Yield Components of Faba Bean
This study set out to investigate the effect of bio-fertilizers containing nitrogen-fixing bacteria and phosphorus on grain yield and yield components of Faba bean. To this end a factorial experiment on the basis of randomized complete block design with four replications was conducted in Behbahan region at South eastern part of Khuzestan Province of Iran. The experimental treatments included Ni...
متن کامل