Essays in empirical political economy
Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Economics, 2017.
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | eng |
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2017
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/111341 |
| _version_ | 1826210913007435776 |
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| author | Cantoni, Enrico |
| author2 | Joshua D. Angrist and Benjamin A. Olken. |
| author_facet | Joshua D. Angrist and Benjamin A. Olken. Cantoni, Enrico |
| author_sort | Cantoni, Enrico |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Economics, 2017. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T14:57:27Z |
| format | Thesis |
| id | mit-1721.1/111341 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T14:57:27Z |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| publisher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1113412019-04-10T09:21:45Z Essays in empirical political economy Cantoni, Enrico Joshua D. Angrist and Benjamin A. Olken. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics. Economics. Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Economics, 2017. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references (pages 147-160). This thesis consists of four chapters on the causes of voter participation. In the first chapter, I study the effects of voting costs through a novel, quasi-experimental design based on geographic discontinuities. I compare parcels and census blocks located near borders between adjacent voting precincts. Units on opposite sides of a border are observationally identical, except for their assignment to different polling locations. The discontinuous assignment to polling places produces sharp changes in the travel distance voters face to cast their ballots. In a sample of nine municipalities in Massachusetts and Minnesota, I find that a 1-standard deviation (.245 mile) increase in distance to the polling place reduces the number of ballots cast by 2% to 5% in the 2012 presidential, 2013 municipal, 2014 midterm, and 2016 presidential primary elections. During non-presidential elections, effects in high-minority areas are three times as large as those in low-minority areas, while no significant difference emerges from the 2012 presidential election. Finally, I use my estimates to simulate the impact of various counterfactual assignments of voters to polling places. I find that erasing the effect of distances to polling places would increase turnout by 1.6 to 4 percentage points and reduce minority participation gaps in non-presidential elections by 11% to 13%. By contrast, the optimal feasible counterfactual boundaries, holding polling locations constant, would result in small changes in the minority participation gap. The second chapter, coauthored with Vincent Pons, tests whether politicians can use direct contact to reconnect with citizens, increase turnout, and win votes. During the 2014 Italian municipal elections, we randomly assigned 26,000 voters to receive visits from city council candidates, from canvassers supporting the candidates' party list, or to a control group. While canvassers' visits increased turnout by 1.8 percentage points, candidates' had no impact on participation. Candidates increased their own vote share in the precincts they canvassed, but only at the expense of their running mates. This suggests that their failure to mobilize nonvoters resulted from focusing on securing the preferences of active voters. The third chapter, coauthored with Ludovica Gazze, studies the turnout effects of concurrent elections. We notice that existing models of turnout behavior have different implications when regarding the impact of concurrent elections, both on voter turnout and on the probability of casting a valid ballot. We use a simple theoretical framework to formalize this argument and to derive testable predictions on the effects of concurrent elections. We test these predictions using administrative and survey data from Italy. Exploiting different voting ages for the two Houses of Parliament, we show that eligibility to cast a ballot for the Senate has no impact on turnout or information acquisition. By contrast, high-salience elections increase turnout and the number of valid ballots cast when they concur with lower-salience elections. These findings are consistent with information acquisition costs being relatively low for the lower-salience election, conditional on turning out to vote for the higher-salience one. Moreover, these findings appear inconsistent with social pressure to be seen at the voting booth and voter fatigue playing a prominent role as determinants of turnout and voting behavior. In the fourth chapter, I use county-level administrative data from 1992 to 2014 and a Differences-in-Differences research design to identify and estimate the impact of voter ID laws on turnout, Democratic vote share, and irregular ballots. I find no effect of ID laws on any of these outcomes. All estimates are fairly precise and robust to a number of regression specifications. Estimates of heterogeneous effects by educational attainment, poverty rate and minority presence are similarly supportive of ID laws having no impact on electoral outcomes of any type. by Enrico Cantoni. 1. A Precinct Too Far: Turnout and Voting Costs -- 2. Do Interactions with Candidates Increase Voter Support and Participation? -- 3. Turnout in Concurrent Elections -- 4. Got ID? The Zero Effects of Voter ID Laws. Ph. D. 2017-09-15T15:29:55Z 2017-09-15T15:29:55Z 2017 2017 Thesis http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/111341 1003290884 eng MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 219 pages application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| spellingShingle | Economics. Cantoni, Enrico Essays in empirical political economy |
| title | Essays in empirical political economy |
| title_full | Essays in empirical political economy |
| title_fullStr | Essays in empirical political economy |
| title_full_unstemmed | Essays in empirical political economy |
| title_short | Essays in empirical political economy |
| title_sort | essays in empirical political economy |
| topic | Economics. |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/111341 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT cantonienrico essaysinempiricalpoliticaleconomy |