Are educated leaders good for education? evidence from India
Lahoti, Rahul and Sahoo, Soham (2020) Are educated leaders good for education? evidence from India. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 176. pp. 42-62.
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Abstract
Formal education is often viewed as a proxy for the quality of leaders. Recently, candidates with low education levels have been disqualified from contesting local elections in some states in India. But there is no conclusive evidence linking education to the effectiveness of leaders. Against this backdrop, we investigate whether having educated political lead ers in the state legislatures in India improves education outcomes. Using comprehensive data on various outcomes such as learning levels, enrollment, school funding and infras tructure, we find that the effectiveness of educated leaders depends on the initial level of development of the state. Educated leaders yield better education outcomes for their con stituents only in those states where the initial level of development is high. There is no impact of educated leaders in less-developed states or in the overall sample. Our identifi cation strategy is based on an instrumental variable that exploits the quasi-experimental election outcomes of close elections between educated and less-educated politicians. The results are consistent throughout various robustness analyses. These findings have implica tions for recent policy changes mandating minimum education requirements on candidates in two states and similar proposed changes in other states.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Authors: | Lahoti, Rahul and Sahoo, Soham |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Education, Learning Outcomes, Political Economy, Leaders, Close Elections, India |
| Subjects: | Social sciences > Education |
| Divisions: | Azim Premji University - Bengaluru > School of Public Policy and Governance |
| Full Text Status: | Public |
| URI: | http://publications.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/id/eprint/2347 |
| Publisher URL: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2020.03.026 |
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