Building networks: Investigating the quid pro quo between local politicians & developers
研究印度孟买市政选举如何扰乱政客与开发商的利益关系，发现执政党落选会使房地产项目完工时间延长5%，其中选举前后的审批延迟解释了23%的延期。
Mutually beneficial arrangements between politicians and real estate developers are common in many developing countries. We document what happens when the politician-developer nexus is disrupted by an election. We construct a novel dataset of real estate projects and electoral constituencies in Mumbai’s municipal government. We find that an incumbent party losing the election increases real estate project completion times by 5%. We find no effect of quasi-random redistricting or changes in voter preferences on project delays. We investigate two mechanisms for the slowdown associated with party turnover – delays in construction approvals around the time of the election and increase in litigation against projects after the election. While we see no rise in litigation, we find that delayed approvals near an election explain 23% of the increased total delays due to party change.