Fixing Market Failures or Fixing Elections? Agricultural Credit in India
研究印度政府银行在选举年增加农业信贷5-10个百分点，且集中在竞争激烈选区，但未提升农业产出，揭示政治干预的代价。
This paper integrates theories of political budget cycles with theories of tactical electoral redistribution to test for political capture in a novel way. Studying banks in India, I find that government-owned bank lending tracks the electoral cycle, with agricultural credit increasing by 5–10 percentage points in an election year. There is significant cross-sectional targeting, with large increases in districts in which the election is particularly close. This targeting does not occur in nonelection years or in private bank lending. I show capture is costly: elections affect loan repayment, and election-year credit booms do not measurably affect agricultural output.