Abstract
Does the economic success of democratization depend on newly elected leaders’ characteristics? We exploit the unique Indonesian democratization process, where districts exogenously democratized in different years. In a census of manufacturing plants, employment drops by 5% in districts that elect a non-college educated mayor, while employment stays constant under college graduates. Non-college educated mayors substantially raise taxation but provide less infrastructure, do not spend more on social programs, and are more often involved in corruption cases. Other leader attributes and district characteristics, as well as tests for pre-treatment trends, for selection on unobservables, and for close elections do not explain away the important role of leaders’ education in shaping local policies and growth.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 571-600 |
| Number of pages | 30 |
| Journal | Journal of Economic Growth |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Dec 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This paper was previously circulated under the title “Electing Educated Leaders during Democratization: Evidence from Indonesia”. We thank Monica Martinez-Bravo and Andreas Stegmann for providing data for this project, and Shuka Ishikawa for excellent research assistance. We thank Vimal Balasubramaniam, Maurice Bun, Jonathan Dingel, Aysil Emirmahmutoglu, Gunnar Eskeland, Kevin Evans, Andreas Ferrara, Hengky Kurniawan, Peter Lanjouw, Mohammed Mardan, Sultan Mehmood, Yingjie Qi, Felix Schilling, Maximilian Todtenhaupt, Shaoda Wang, Floris Tobias Zoutman, conference participants at the 2021 International Conference in Development Economics, the 2021 German Development Economics Conference, the 2021 Nordic Conference in Development Economics, the International Workshop on The Political Economy of Democracy and Dictatorship (PEDD) 2021, the KVS New Paper Sessions 2020, the 2020 UEA PhD Student Workshop in Urban Economics as well as seminar participants at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Erasmus University Rotterdam, NHH Norwegian School of Economics, and the Monash and Warwick University Applied Young Economist Seminar for valuable comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.
Funding
This paper was previously circulated under the title “Electing Educated Leaders during Democratization: Evidence from Indonesia”. We thank Monica Martinez-Bravo and Andreas Stegmann for providing data for this project, and Shuka Ishikawa for excellent research assistance. We thank Vimal Balasubramaniam, Maurice Bun, Jonathan Dingel, Aysil Emirmahmutoglu, Gunnar Eskeland, Kevin Evans, Andreas Ferrara, Hengky Kurniawan, Peter Lanjouw, Mohammed Mardan, Sultan Mehmood, Yingjie Qi, Felix Schilling, Maximilian Todtenhaupt, Shaoda Wang, Floris Tobias Zoutman, conference participants at the 2021 International Conference in Development Economics, the 2021 German Development Economics Conference, the 2021 Nordic Conference in Development Economics, the International Workshop on The Political Economy of Democracy and Dictatorship (PEDD) 2021, the KVS New Paper Sessions 2020, the 2020 UEA PhD Student Workshop in Urban Economics as well as seminar participants at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Erasmus University Rotterdam, NHH Norwegian School of Economics, and the Monash and Warwick University Applied Young Economist Seminar for valuable comments.
Keywords
- Democratization
- Indonesia
- Manufacturing
- Political leader education