Salience and Accountability: School Infrastructureand Last-Minute Electoral Punishment

Nicolas Ajzenman and Ruben Durante ()

School of Government Working Papers from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella

Abstract: Can seemingly unimportant factors influence voting decisions by making certain issuessalient? We study this question in the context of Argentina 2015 presidential electionsby examining how the quality of the infrastructure of the school where citizens wereassigned to vote influenced their voting choice. Exploiting the quasi-random assignmentof voters to ballot stations located in different public schools in the city of BuenosAires, we find that individuals assigned to schools with poorer infrastructure weresignificantly less likely to vote for Mauricio Macri, the incumbent mayor then runningfor president. The effect is larger in low-income areas - where fewer people can affordprivate substitutes to public education - and in places where more households have children in school age. The effect is unlikely to be driven by information scarcity,since information on public school infrastructure was readily available to parents beforeelections. Rather, direct exposure to poor school infrastructure at the time of votingis likely to make public education - and the poor performance of the incumbent - moresalient.

Keywords: Elections; Salience; Electoral Punishment; Public Infrastructure; Education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D83 D90 I25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2019-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol and nep-ure
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Related works:
Working Paper: Salience and Accountability: School Infrastructure and Last-Minute Electoral Punishment (2020)
Working Paper: Salience and Accountability: School Infrastructure and Last-Minute Electoral Punishment (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:udt:wpgobi:201905

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