Titolo: The Politics and Economics of Government Aid: Evidence from the Italian Cassa per il Mezzogiorno
Autori: G.Lecce , T. Colussi, M. Onorato, M. Manacorda
Abstract: Does long-term exposure to government transfers lead voters to persistently trade-off ideological attachment in favor of materialistic rewards? To address this question, we use newly digitalized micro-data on the universe of interventions under one of the most ambitious government local development policies in post-WWII Europe, the Italian Cassa per il Mezzogiorno. We present evidence that the program was successfully targeted by the incumbent party to garner political support and we use this as a novel source of identification for program effects. We show that the program persistently increased beneficiary communities' support for the majority party, even long after the end of the program, which we take as evidence of voters' opportunistic behavior. We speculate that this is due to beneficiary communities - historically rewarded for their vote - having learnt that supporting the majority party would allow them to extract benefits.