Democracy, Public Expenditures, and the Poor : Understanding Political Incentives for Providing Public Services
By Philip E. Keefer, Stuti Khemani. 2003
185 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Countries vary systematically with respect to the incentives of politicians to provide broad public goods, and to reduce poverty. Even in developing countries that are democracies, politicians often have incentives to divert resources to political rents, and to private transfers that benefit a few citizens at the expense of many. These distortions can be traced to imperfections in political markets, that are greater in some countries than in others. The authors review the theory, and evidence on the impact of incomplete information of voters, the lack of credibility of political promises, and social polarization on political incentives. They argue that the effects of these imperfections are large, but that their implications are insufficiently integrated into the design of policy reforms aimed at improving the provision of public goods, and reducing poverty.
Subfields: Development, Economics and Econometrics, Political Science and International Relations
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c739634e7f73e8c0d0c929b7f042dc284d03787f
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Citations in the corpus
- Is Democracy Good for the Poor (2006, unknown): “Keefer and Khemani 2003).”
- The Politics of Public Services: A Service Characteristics Approach (2015, background): “For similar reasons, politicians find it difficult to build credible, long-term political platforms for some aspects of these services, because citizens will not have confidence that they can deliver on promises (Keefer & Khemani, 2003).”
- Exposing Corrupt Politicians: The Effects of Brazil's Publicly Released Audits on Electoral Outcomes (2006, unknown): “Also see, Keefer and Khemani (2005) for a review of some of the theoretical and empirical evidence on the importance of incomplete information for voters on the delivery of public services.”