Legislature Size and Welfare: Evidence from Brazil
Legislature Size and Welfare: Evidence from Brazil
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立法机关规模和福利：来自巴西的证据
DOI：
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发表时间：
2019
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Gabriel Cepaluni
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
U. Mignozzetti;Gabriel Cepaluni
立法机关的规模对公共服务的提供有什么影响？虽然文献涉及立法机关规模的代表性和政府开支，其对福利的影响仍然研究不足。在本文中，我们调查的立法机关规模对福利的影响，利用2005年和2008年之间在巴西的市议会规模的外生变化。我们表明，增加立法者改善教育和医疗保健。然而，对于那些被认为对选民来说非常突出的服务，结果证明是正确的，这些服务最容易获得信任，并且很容易提供。从这个意义上说，教育质量和预防性保健没有受到影响，而婴儿死亡率和小学入学率却有了显著改善。为了调查这一机制，我们调查了前议员，并分析了在此期间各市提出的346，553项法案。这一分析在很大程度上证实了我们的发现，表明政治家更喜欢提供私人和地方公共产品。本文对立法机构的设计具有启示意义。
What is the effect of legislature size on public service provision? While the literature relates legislature size to representation and government expenditure, its implications for welfare remain understudied. In this paper, we investigate the effects of legislature size on welfare, exploiting exogenous changes in city-council size in Brazil between 2005 and 2008. We show that adding a legislator improves education and health care. However, the results prove true for the services that are believed to be highly salient to voters, are easiest to claim credit for, and are easy to provide. In this sense, education quality and preventive health care remain unaffected while infant mortality and primary school enrollment significantly improve. To investigate the mechanism, we surveyed former councilors and analyzed 346,553 bills proposed by municipalities in the period. This analysis largely corroborates our findings, showing that politicians prefer to provide private and local public goods. This paper has implications for the design of legislative institutions.