Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/23720
Title: Ethnic identities, public spending and political regimes
Authors: Ghosh, S
Mitra, A
Keywords: ethnic identities;discrimination;public spending;political regimes
Issue Date: 14-Oct-2021
Publisher: Elsevier on behalf of Association for Comparative Economic Studies
Citation: Ghosh, S. and Mitra, A. (2022) 'Ethnic identities, public spending and political regimes', Journal of Comparative Economics, 50 (1), pp. 256 - 279. doi: 10.1016/j.jce.2021.09.003.
Abstract: Do democracies discriminate less against minorities as compared to non-democracies? How does the dominance of an ethnic group affect discrimination under various political regimes? We build a theory to analyse such questions. In our model, political leaders (democratically elected or not) decide on the allocation of spending on different types of public goods: a general public good and an ethnically-targetable public good which benefits the majority ethnic group while imposing a cost on the other minorities. We show that, under democracy, lower ethnic dominance leads to greater provision of the general public good while higher dominance implies higher provision of the ethnically-targetable good. Interestingly, the opposite relation obtains under dictatorship. This implies that political regime changes can favour or disfavour minorities based on the ambient level of ethnic dominance. Several historical events involving regime changes can be analysed within our framework and are consistent with our results.
URI: https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/23720
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2021.09.003
ISSN: 0147-5967
Other Identifiers: ORCiD: Sugata Ghosh https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8431-0473
ORCiD: Anirban Mitra https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6297-1361
Appears in Collections:Dept of Economics and Finance Research Papers

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