Do voters reward politicians for education expenditures?

Abstract Since education is publicly provided in most countries, the political system typically determines the level of education expenditures. Thus, it is essential to understand politicians' incentives to allocate resources to education. This paper provides causal evidence that voters reward politicians for educational expenditures by estimating the impact of a change in public education spending on mayors' reelection chances. To do so, we use an exogenous source of variation in education expenditures brought about by a federal reform, FUNDEF, in Brazil. We show that increases in education e...

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