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We exploit new experimental and quasi-experimental data to investigate voters' intrinsic motivation to engage politically. Does having the right to vote increase engagement or, given significant incentives to free ride, do eligible voters remain rationally unengaged? Does knowledge that ones group is pivotal reduce free riding? And are the politically engaged influenced by election-relevant policy information in the run-up to a major election? To address these questions, we fielded an original survey of 5,400 Mexican high school seniors just prior to the historic 2018 general election. Age-based regression discontinuity results show that the just-eligible score higher on measures of low-cost political engagement compared to the just-ineligible. A first survey experiment reveals that information that the youth vote will be pivotal increases the eligible respondents' interest in the presidential debate and in the election result. In the second experiment, information about current policy outcomes affects future policy priorities in ways consistent with the incentives of eligible respondents to collect relevant information on salient policy issues.

Theory suggests that employee trust is key to productivity in organizations, but empirical evidence documenting links between trust and constraints on performance is scarce. This paper analyzes self-collected data on public sector employees from eighteen Latin American countries and finds that individual-level trust is relevant to three types of performance factors. First, high-trust employees are more willing to collaborate and share information with coworkers and are more supportive of technological innovation. Second, high-trust respondents have different perceptions of organizational constraints: they are less concerned with low staff quality or lack of discretion to innovate, and more concerned with staff shortages. Third, trust in coworkers is associated with stronger mission motivation. Instrumental variable strategies based on the transmission of trust through social and professional channels account for potential sources of endogeneity. A survey experiment on preferences for social distancing policies provides further evidence that trust enhances mission motivation: employee policy preferences align better with the implied government policy when their trust in the public sector is higher.

The increase in access to digital technologies is opening up opportunities for governments in Latin America and the Caribbean to offer digital public services. However, there is scarce evidence regarding the benefits and costs of potential projects which makes it difficult for governments in the region to prioritize digital projects for implementation. As part of the report titled “Digitalizing Public Services: Opportunities for Latin America and the Caribbean,” produced by the Inter-American Development Bank (Cristia and Vlaicu, 2022), a set of cost-benefit analyses of the digital public services were performed. The present document complements the mentioned report by presenting the methodology, assumptions, and results of these cost-benefit analyses. To increase the comparability of the results across digital public services evaluated, common assumptions and a standardized methodology were used. Moreover, contextual conditions were fixed across projects by estimating results for a base country, Peru. The robustness of the results were examined by replicating the analysis for Chile, El Salvador, and Jamaica. Digital public services were evaluated in three sectors: education, health and government administrative services (e.g. production of identity cards). For each sector, the benefits and costs of two digital projects were estimated. For some these digital projects, only one policy option was assessed but, in other cases, several policy options were analyzed. A total of 11 policy options were assessed as part of this exercise. Results indicate that, in general, the policy options analyzed produced positive net present values. However, there is wide variation in the net present value across policy options suggesting that governments should carefully evaluate which digital public services they should prioritize for implementation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has sped up digital transformation and brought within reach the possibility of dramatic improvements in public services for millions across Latin America and the Caribbean. There is large variation in value added between different technology-based projects, and governments should leverage the available evidence to prioritize project designs that yield the greatest possible social value. This report seeks to serve as a source of inspiration, offering clear and concrete examples of easily implementable interventions in education, health, transactional services, and fiscal management with the potential to help build more inclusive and developed societies.

Using a multistage model of collective decision making, we study how partisan polarization in legislatures affects the initial choice and future revision of procedural rules. We analyze how a legis...

A new survey of 6,040 voting-age individuals conducted in seven Latin American metropolitan areas reveals that political and interpersonal mistrust, risk aversion and time impatience are strong predictors of voter preferences for public spending. Respondents with higher mistrust or impatience are more likely to choose transfers over public goods; more impatient respondents are also more likely to choose current spending over public investment. Randomized experiments providing information about the benefits of public investment have the expected average demand impacts. Respondents with high political mistrust or impatience increase their demand for public investment significantly less than others.

Data on political engagement of newly eligible young voters in 34 countries during 2004-2016 indicate that voting eligibility is associated with higher political engagement, casting doubt on the view that voters are rationally ignorant. Voting eligibility is associated with higher political interest, more discussion of political issues and attendance of political meetings, and more political knowledge. These effects are stronger in countries with enforced mandatory voting. The increase in political engagement is larger closer to the prior election, and it is driven by the engagement of eligible voters, implying that young voters acquire political information in anticipation of elections rather than ex post.

Why do voters elect politicians whose populist policies degrade the quality of government? Low social trust can account for this paradox: it undermines the collective action by voters that is necessary to elect politicians who support high-quality government. If all voters believe that every other voter will accept particularistic benefits in exchange for supporting poorly performing governments, no voter has an incentive to spurn those benefits in order to select politicians who promise high-quality government. By the same logic, low social trust prevents voters from sanctioning politicians who renege on their promises. Low political trust springs from social mistrust, yielding low-quality government and populism as optimal electoral strategies. New survey data from seven Latin American countries reveal that respondents who exhibit low social trust are more likely to prefer populist policies that reflect a low quality of government.

New data on public sector employees from 18 Latin American countries shed light on the role of trust in the performance of government agencies. An original survey conducted during the first COVID-19 wave includes randomized experiments with pandemic-related treatments. Individual-level trust in coworkers, other public employees, and citizens is positively related to performance-enhancing behaviors and policy attitudes. High-trust and low-trust respondents report different assessments of their main work constraints. Also, they draw different inferences and prefer different policy responses when exposed to data-based framing treatments about social distancing outcomes in their countries.

This paper examines new data on public sector employees from eighteen Latin American countries to shed light on the role of trust in the performance of government agencies. We developed an original survey taken during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic that includes randomized experiments with pandemic-related treatments. We document that individual-level trust in coworkers, other public employees, and citizens is positively related to performance-enhancing behaviors, such as cooperation and information sharing, and policy attitudes, such as openness to technological innovations in public service delivery. Trust is more strongly linked to positive behaviors and attitudes in non-merit-based civil service systems. High-trust and low-trust respondents report different assessments of their main work constraints. Also, they draw different inferences and prefer different policy responses when exposed to data-based framing treatments about social distancing outcomes in their countries. Low-trust public employees are more likely to assign responsibility for a negative outcome to the government and to prefer stricter enforcement of social distancing.

This paper proposes and empirically tests a new demand-side explanation for distortions in public spending composition. Voters prefer spending with certain and immediate benefits when they have low trust in electoral promises and high discount rates. The paper incorporates these characteristics of voter choices into a probabilistic voting model with public spending tradeoffs. In equilibrium, candidates promising larger allocations to transfers and short-term public goods are more likely to win elections in settings with low trust and high impatience. An original survey of individual-level preferences for public spending in seven Latin American capital cities provides observational and experimental evidence consistent with the model-derived hypotheses. Respondents reporting low trust in politician promises are more likely to prefer transfers to public goods; respondents with high discount rates prefer short-term to long-term spending. These patterns also appear in country-level data on spending outcomes from the last two decades.

This paper proposes a structural approach to measuring the eects of electoral ac- countability. We estimate a political agency model with imperfect information in order to identify and quantify discipline and selection eects, using data on U.S. governors for 1982-2012. We …nd that the possibility of reelection provides a signi…cant incentive for incumbents to exert eort. We also …nd a selection eect, although it is weaker in terms of its eect on average governor performance. According to our model, the widely-used two-term regime improves voter welfare by 4:2% compared to a one-term regime, and …nd that a three-term regime may improve voter welfare even further.

What explains the wide variation across countries in the use of vote buying and policy promises during election campaigns? We address this question, and account for a number of stylized facts and apparent anomalies regarding vote buying, using a model in which parties cannot fully commit to campaign promises. We find that high vote buying is associated with frequent reneging on campaign promises, strong electoral competition, and high policy rents. Frequent reneging and low party competence reduce campaign promises. If vote buying can be financed out of public resources, incumbents buy more votes and enjoy an electoral advantage, but they also promise more public goods. Vote buying has distributional consequences: voters targeted with vote buying pre-election may receive no government benefits post-election. The results point to obstacles to the democratic transition from clientelist to programmatic forms of electoral competition: parties may not benefit electorally from institutions that increase commitment.

We examine whether public spending misallocations can be traced to voter demand characteristics such as political and interpersonal trust, or risk and time preferences. A model of optimal choice under public spending tradeoffs provides testable hypotheses suitable for individual-level evidence. The data come from an original survey in which we presented voters in seven Latin American countries with choices between different types of public spending. Respondents reporting higher mistrust or higher impatience are more likely to choose transfers over public goods; respondents with higher impatience are also more likely to choose current spending over public investment. These patterns appear in two salient policy areas, education and security, and are robust to plausible alternative explanations. Randomized experiments designed to increase demand for public investment have the intended impacts, while also indicating that political mistrust and high impatience attenuate the estimated treatment effects.

Voters would be better off if they removed politicians offering low-quality government by pursuing populist policies and re-elected those who improved government quality with sustainable policies. In many political contexts, including those with free and fair elections, voters do the opposite. Low social trust can account for this paradox: voters must act collectively to shape political incentives, but low trust among voters is an obstacle to collective action. If every voter believes that fellow voters will accept particularistic benefits from poorly performing governments that keep them from voting against those governments, no voter has an incentive to select politicians who promise high-quality government. By the same logic, low social trust prevents voters from sanctioning politicians who renege on their promises. Frequent reneging on campaign promises, in turn, leads voters to hold low political trust. Low quality government, and in particular populism, emerge as optimal electoral strategies of political candidates in this environment. We analyze new survey data from 6,040 respondents in seven Latin American countries that provides support for a novel argument about populism and the quality of government: voters who express low trust are significantly more likely to prefer populist candidates and policies that reflect a low quality of government.

This paper examines individual-level support for trade liberalization, relates it to beliefs about trade, and measures its sensitivity to positive and negative framing. The data come from the 2018 Latinobarometro survey of eighteen countries, in which the authors embedded a survey experiment to study framing effects. It is found that respondents are generally favorable to increased trade with other countries, based on perceived trade benefits to employment, prices, and product variety. Support for trade is unaffected by positive framing but is highly sensitive downward to employment loss framing. Positive framing does shift upward respondent beliefs that trade increases product variety and reduces prices, but also raises concerns about low wages. Negative framing substantially reduces the prevailing beliefs that trade is associated with high employment, and there is no offsetting effect on the consumption side. Trade support levels and sensitivity display heterogeneity across education levels consistent with skill-based theories of trade, as well as interesting country, age, gender, and income heterogeneity.

This paper examines general support for trade at the individual level, measures its sensitivity to pro- and anti-trade framing, and relates these effects to how framing affects specific beliefs about trade. The data come from a randomized experiment we included in the 2018 Latinobarometro survey covering 18 countries. We find that respondents' high support for trade is based primarily on perceived employment gains. General support for trade is unaffected by consumption benefits framing, but is highly sensitive downward to employment loss framing. Positive framing does shift upward respondent beliefs that trade reduces consumption prices, but also raises concerns about low wages. Negative framing substantially weakens the prevailing beliefs that trade brings higher employment. Framing impacts reflect behavioral responses and depend on country-level factors, such as unemployment and import dependence, as well as individual-level factors, education in particular moderating framing responses in line with relative factor endowments theories of trade.

This paper estimates the effect of voting eligibility on civic engagement measured along three dimensions: political motivation, political activities, and political knowledge. These outcomes originate in the AmericasBarometer 2004-2016 surveys of eligible voters. To identify the effects the paper exploits variation in field survey dates relative to election dates, given country-specific voting age laws. It is found that voter enfranchisement increases self-reported interest in politics, political socialization, and attendance of political meetings; however, consumption of political news is not statistically different between eligible and non-eligible citizens. Some evidence indicates that the political activities voters engage in translate into increased political knowledge, in contrast with the view that voters are rationally ignorant. The effects are larger in countries with enforced mandatory voting.

This paper studies a setting where a relatively uninformed voter holds a policymaker accountable through an informed intermediary. In equilibrium the voter uses the intermediary to insulate the policymaker from pandering incentives when the voter's policy expertise is low or the policymaker's congruence is high. The voter can thus enjoy the benefits of bureaucratic expertise without forfeiting electoral responsiveness. We examine the model's predictions using U.S. city-level data, and find that hierarchically-accountable managers reduce popular city employment, and adjust it more flexibly, than electorally-accountable mayors. The estimated incentive effects are smaller in cities with high voter expertise and larger during election years, and are robust to instrumentation by precipitation shocks that influenced early 20th century manager government adoptions for reasons obsolete today.

A puzzling feature of self-governing organizations is persistent majority support for restrictive, seemingly nonmajoritarian, procedures (e.g., chairs and committees). This article provides a theory of self-enforcing majoritarian commitment to restrictive procedures. We ask (1) why majorities consent to restrictive procedures in the first place, (2) why restrictive procedures survive challenges thereafter, and (3) with what policy consequences. In the model, a risk-averse majority allocates procedural rights to increase procedural efficiency (i.e., reduce the procedural uncertainty of free-for-all bargaining). An equilibrium procedure is generally asymmetric and restrictive, generating nonmajoritarian policy bias. Still, a majority may persist in endorsing it so as to avoid amplifying procedural and policy uncertainty

In the last two decades more than 120 countries have adopted a multiyear budget process (Medium-Term Framework, or MTF) that enables the central government to set multiyear fiscal targets. This paper analyzes a newly-collected dataset of worldwide MTF adoptions during 1990–2008. It exploits within-country variation in adoption in a dynamic panel framework to estimate MTFs' impacts on aggregate as well as sectoral measures of fiscal performance. We find that on average multiyear budgeting improves budget balance by about 2 percentage points with more advanced MTF phases having a larger impact. Higher-phase MTFs also reduce health spending volatility, while only the top-phase MTF has a measurable impact on health sector technical efficiency.

What explains significant variation across countries in the use of vote buying instead of campaign promises to secure voter support? This paper explicitly models the tradeoff parties face between engaging in vote buying and making campaign promises, and explores the distributional consequences of this decision, in a setting where party credibility can vary. When parties are less credible they spend more on vote buying and target vote buying more heavily toward groups that do not believe campaign promises. When political credibility is sufficiently low, some voter groups are targeted only with vote buying and not with promises of post-electoral transfers. Stronger electoral competition reduces rent seeking but increases vote buying. Incumbents may have an advantage in undertaking vote buying; the paper finds that in a dynamic setting the prospect of a future incumbency advantage increases current vote buying.

This paper examines the effects of the most recent U.S. housing bubble on the fiscal policy of California cities. We use an instrumental variables approach that helps isolate the fiscal consequences of house price appreciation by taking advantage of the influence of local topological constraints on the elasticity of house prices with respect to interest rates. Our analysis generates three main findings. First, despite Prop 13 fiscal constraints, rapid house price appreciation has a strong effect on property tax revenue. Second, the resulting increase in property tax revenue was largely offset by a reduction in other local tax revenue. This offsetting response leaves total city expenditure unrelated to local house prices. In that sense the housing bubble did not produce local fiscal bubbles. Third, we find that fiscal adjustments to house price appreciation depend on local political institutions.