Entry, Exit and Candidate Selection: Experimental Evidence from India
Increased voter awareness about the role of local government in providing social insurance influences candidate entry and exit in local elections. Our evidence comes from a pre-election voter awareness campaign field experiment in rural India. In treatment villages, worse-performing incumbents are less likely to run for re-election. While their family members seek to replace them, they fail to gain any incumbency-related advantage. Second, women and lower castes and citizens from poorer villages and villages with less social insurance take-up are more likely to enter as candidates and gain positive vote share. Third, the treatment-induced increase in female candidacy persists in the subsequent election cycle.

Written with Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo (both MIT) and Rohini Pande (Harvard University)
Date: 6 February 2019, 12:30 (Wednesday, 4th week, Hilary 2019)
Venue: Manor Road Building, Manor Road OX1 3UQ
Venue Details: Lecture Theatre
Speaker: Clément Imbert (University of Warwick)
Organising department: Department of Economics
Organisers: Margaryta Klymak (Department of International Development), Rossa O'Keeffe-O'Donovan (Nuffield College), Michael Koelle (Pembroke College)
Organiser contact email address: suzanne.george@economics.ox.ac.uk
Part of: CSAE Lunchtime Seminars
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Public
Editors: Anne Pouliquen, Suzanne George, Melis Clark, Anna Siwek