Roads to Power or Rent? How Indian Legislators Compete on Public Works

This study explores how politicians with influence over public works programs in India balance incentives for electoral support and rent seeking. It argues that government elites manage this tension by concentrating rent-seeking opportunities while facilitating efficient public goods provision in their junior colleagues' constituencies.

Research Context

Using fine-grained data on road construction, analyses employing various causal inference strategies examine the relationship between political hierarchy and infrastructure delivery. The findings reveal a complex dynamic where ruling party legislators show high overall road provision but appear to strategically limit access to rent-seeking opportunities for their partisan subordinates.

Key Observations

* Data & Methods: Analyses of India's public works data using causal inference techniques.

* Mechanism Finding: Ministers' constituencies exhibit higher levels of rent seeking, despite overall high road provision by the ruling party.

* Influence Factor: Co-partisan ministers significantly shape access to rent-seeking opportunities for senior legislators.

Implications

These results illuminate how politicized distribution can sometimes mitigate inefficiencies in infrastructure provision.