This paper examines how local media affects electoral accountability and the quality of public education in Brazil. Exploiting the entry timing of the first local radio station in a municipality and the geographical area it covers, I find that local media decrease (increase) the probability of mayors being re-elected when they miss (exceed) the educational targets set by the federal government. I then examine the two main channels through which this enhancement in accountability can impact the quality of public schools. I estimate that local radio, by alleviating the moral hazard problem and inducing politicians to exert more effort, increased test scores by 0.16 standard deviations. I also show that local radio had negligible impact on educational outcomes through the selection of higher quality candidates. I interpret these reduced form findings through a political agency model, which I structurally estimate. The model fits my key findings and shows that the potentially puzzling combination of large moral hazard and limited selection effects can be rationalized by low heterogeneity in the quality of the candidate pool. Finally, the model allows me to aggregate the reduced form results and recover the full effect of the expansion of local radios in Brazil on educational outcomes.
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This paper studies the effects of campaign spending limits on political entry and competition. We study a reform in Brazil that imposed limits on campaign spending for mayoral elections. These limits were implemented with a discontinuous kink that we exploit for causal identification. We find that stricter limits increase political competition by creating a larger pool of candidates that is on average less wealthy. Stricter spending limits also reduce the likelihood that mayors are reelected. We interpret our reduced-form findings using a contest model with endogenous entry of candidates.
The separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches is a cornerstone of democracy. This system of checks and balances, however, can be circumvented by partisan loyalties if legislators strategically avoid exerting oversight when their own party controls the executive branch. It is thus an empirical question whether the separation of powers prevents the abuse of power in practice. We answer this question by measuring the extent to which members of political opposition parties in a city council effectively check the mayor’s performance in Brazil. We employ a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effect of an additional politically opposed legislator, and we find that political opposition increases oversight action and decreases corruption, with the effect fully concentrated on mayors facing reelection pressure. We trace the impact of oversight, via a reduction in healthcare spending irregularities, all the way to impacts on healthcare service delivery and health outcomes.
Does local media impact the take-up of government programs? Often government programs are implemented at the local level and citizens need specific information that will not be covered by national media. Using data on the entry timing of local radios in Brazil, I estimate the impact of these stations on Bolsa Família (conditional cash transfer program) take-up by comparing the take-up in municipalities that received their first local radio station just before or just after a de facto deadline to sign up for the program in June 2006. Results show an impact on take-up of 13 percentage points, with effects concentrated in municipalities where the local radio faced little competition from non-local radio. I also present direct evidence that these radio stations provide valuable local information for listeners to take-up government programs. Recordings of radio coverage of a voter biometric registration program implemented at the municipal level show intense coverage by local radio but almost none from out-of-town radios.