Essays on the social effects of public spending
- Autores: Federico Gabriel Masera
- Directores de la Tesis: Luis C. Corchón Díaz (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid ( España ) en 2017
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Olivier Marie (presid.), Jesús Fernández-Huertas Moraga (secret.), Gianmarco Daniele (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Economía por la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: e-Archivo
- Resumen
Chapter 1: While most of the western world has faced a rapid process of secularization over recent generations, many other countries, especially in Latin America and the Muslim world, have maintained high levels of religiosity. Here, I propose a model of intergenerational transmission of religious values and competition between the state and the church that links changes in state efficiency to this dynamics. I show how, if the state becomes more efficient, agents vote for a higher size of the state. As the size of the state increases participation in church activities decreases and the next generation becomes less religious reinforcing the effect of the initial increase in the efficiency of the state. Because of this mechanism agents may have incentives to destroy part of the efficiency of the state in order to favor the church. I then provide some empirical evidence of this mechanism and show how it is only present for services provided by the state that are in direct competition with the church.
Chapter 2: Violent, criminal or terrorist organizations are often also providers of many social services. In this paper we show how the capacity of the state of providing similar social services may influence the support for these organizations. We do so by studying how the support for the Pakistani Taliban changed after two natural disasters: an earthquake in 2005 and a flood in 2010 which received different levels of international help. While the earthquake took place at a time when Pakistan was a close ally of the United States and it received extensive international aid, the flood occurred at a time when Pakistan-U.S. relations had deteriorated and consequently it received insufficient funds. Support for the Taliban decreased in the areas affected by the earthquake, while it increased in the areas affected by the flood. This shows how a lack of state capacity may leave a void that can be then filled by the Taliban. We then show how alternate explanations such as anger against the incumbent for poor performance and political substitution among non-incumbent political groups can not account for these results.
Chapter 3: The withdrawal from the Afghan and Iraqi wars has led to the arrival of vast quantities of military equipment to the US. Much of this equipment, now unused by the military, has been redistributed to police departments via a program called 1033. In this paper, I study the causal effect on criminal activity and police behavior of the militarization of the police through this program. I do so by taking into account that military equipment is stored in various disposition centers. Police departments do not pay for the cost of these items but must cover all transportation costs. I then use the distance to a disposition center and the timing of the US withdrawal from the wars in an instrumental variable setting. Estimates show that military equipment reduces violent crime and is responsible for 60% of the rapid drop observed since 2007. More than one third of this effect is caused by the displacement of violent crime to neighboring areas. Because police departments do not consider this externality when making militarization decisions, they overmilitarize. Finally, I show that police militarization increases the number of people killed by the police. Estimates imply that all the recent increases in police killings are due to police militarization.
