Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references. / This dissertation presents four distinct essays. Mutually beneficial deals between government officials and merchants have negative social externalities, motivating policies to reduce this form of corruption. Chapter 1 analyzes a model with the following two components. Guanxi, or connections, between officials and merchants remove the risk that merchants expose corrupt officials, providing the basis for officials to treat their friends preferentially, leading to ex ante friendship formation; and supervisors demand bribes from their officials with the goal of maximizing returns from unexposed officials. Individual merchant friendship formation imposes externalities on other merchants. I find that short-term policies can have long-term perverse effects. Furthermore, reducing bureaucratic size might non-intuitively increase corruption, and the mere perception that supervisors are corrupt reduces official-merchant corruption. Chapter 2 proposes an explanation for the political bandwagon effect. In democratic countries where investments risk expropriation when the ruling political party changes, voters have an incentive to boost the support of the expected winning party during elections to show investors that the incoming party is more popular than it actually is, and hence more likely to stay in office after the next election. With rational expectations, investors are not fooled, but voters nonetheless over-vote in favor of the expected winner. The determinants of over-voting are explored, and an empirical exercise provides initial support for the results. / (cont.) Chapter 3 is a joint work with Abhijit Banerjee. The chapter evaluates the performance of the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, and finds no evidence of great effectiveness. The limits to effectiveness, and resistance to evidence-based policy making, are discussed. The authors argue that evidence-based aid is feasible. Chapter 4 is co-authored with James Snyder and Stephen Ansolabehere. The chapter suggests that voters do not merely want to maximize their individual voting power, but also seek to increase the voting power of other voters who have similar spending preferences, effectively allowing other voters to virtually represent them. The authors develop a theoretical explanation, and use legislative ballot proposition data from reapportionment initiatives in California over time and at various aggregation levels for empirical support. / by Ruimin He. / Ph.D.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MIT/oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/29430 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | He, Ruimin, 1981- |
| Contributors | Abhijit V. Banerjee and James M. Snyder, Jr., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics. |
| Publisher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Source Sets | M.I.T. Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 164 p., 7038223 bytes, 7038029 bytes, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission., http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 |
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