Favoritism by the governing elite

Arbeitspapier

In this paper, we study the extent to which ministers engage in regional favoritism. We are the first to provide a comprehensive analysis of a larger set of the governing elite, not just focusing on the primary leader. We hand-collect birthplaces of this governing elite globally. Combining this information with extended night-time luminosity and novel population data over the period from 1992 to 2016, we utilize a staggered difference-in-differences estimator and find that birthplaces of ministers globally emit on average roughly 7% more nightlight. We do not find evidence that this is driven by, or induces migration to their home regions. The size of our data set lets us investigate heterogeneities along a number of dimensions: political power, ministerial portfolio, and the institutional setting.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: ZEW Discussion Papers ; No. 23-053

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior ; State and Local Budget and Expenditures ; Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism; Secession ; Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
• Subject: Favoritism ; elite capture ; spatiality ; luminosity ; population ; democracy

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Asatryan, Zareh ; Baskaran, Thushyanthan ; Birkholz, Carlo ; Hufschmidt, Patrick
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): ZEW - Leibniz-Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung
• (where): Mannheim
• (when): 2023

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/280926
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET