Essays in political accountability
Name
61690915-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
7.34 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
4aff97cec8db3cd6222469578e88b9af
Author(s)
Padró i Miquel, Gerard
Advisor(s)
Daron Acemoglu and James M. Snyder.
Date Issued
2005
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
This thesis is composed by three independent essays on the limits of political accountability. In the first essay I analyze an extremely stylized model of political agency with two dimensional outcomes. I show that the non-contractible nature of rewards to the agent (the politician) is especially taxing when the voters want to control outcomes in more than one dimension. I compare and contrast this environment with traditional multitasking analyses in the context of the theory of the firm. The second essay examines why political accountability has failed so miserably in post- colonial, sub-saharan Africa. I provide a theory based on the exploitation of ethnic divisions by self-interested but weak rulers. This cleavages allow the leaders to expropriate resources from the citizenry, included their own ethnic supporters and still remain in power. The model predicts ethnic bias, patronage, inefficient policies and absence of public investment. The third essay is an empirical analysis of legislative performance in the North Carolina General Assembly. Using a new dataset I am able to show that legislators find their good performance rewarded both within the state legislature and in their electoral careers. These findings have relevance for the discussion on term limits and the theoretical modeling of political agency.
Description
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2005.
"June 2005."
Includes bibliographical references.
Subjects
Economics.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Terms of Use
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