Do Black Politicians Matter?

Abstract

This paper exploits the history of Reconstruction after the American Civil War to estimate the causal effect of politician race on public finance. I overcome the endogeneity between electoral preferences and black representation using the number of free blacks in the antebellum era (1860) as an instrument for black political leaders during Reconstruction. IV estimates show that an additional black official increased per capita county tax revenue by $0.20, more than an hour's wage at the time. The effect was not persistent, however, disappearing entirely at Reconstruction's end. Consistent with the stated policy objectives of black officials, I find positive effects of black politicians on land tenancy and show that exposure to black politicians decreased the black-white literacy gap by more than 7%. These results suggest that politician race has large effects on public finance and individual outcomes over and above electoral preferences for redistribution.

Minority Representation in Local Government

“…Our analysis highlights the fact that increasing minority representation in elected office can be another important tool for addressing racial disparities. In this sense, our work is also closely related to work by Logan (2018), which shows that the election of black politicians during the Reconstruction era affected overall tax and land policy while also helping to decrease the black-white literacy gap. In total, our results suggest that today, well more than a century since Reconstruction and the adoption of the 14 th Amendment and five decades after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, descriptive representation has important implications for the wellbeing of minority citizens.…”

“…A major limitation of this early work is its inability to speak to intra-city variation in policy -either by citizen minority status or neighborhood. Three notable exceptions are Logan's (2018) analysis of black political leaders in the reconstruction era, which considers tax and land policy as well as the black-white literacy gap, Nye et al's (2014) analysis of black mayors elected in large cities, and Pande's (2003) analysis of the impacts of quotas for members of underrepresented castes in Indian state legislatures. Nye et al (2014) is perhaps most relevant to our work in that they consider modern and local elections in the US, although they focus only on large cities.…”

Race and Representation in Campaign Finance

“…Factors that are positively correlated with contributing, such as education and socioeconomic status, have been found to be positively correlated with feelings of linked fate among African Americans (Dawson 1995; Gay 2004; Simien 2005; Tate 1994). There is also evidence that politicians from marginalized identity groups tend to exert greater effort to represent and improve the standing of their group in society (e.g., Broockman 2013; Dawson 1995; Logan 2018).…”

Expertise and Independence on Governing Boards: Evidence from School Districts

“…For instance, Fauver and Fuerst (2006), drawing on German data, argue that representation of workers on corporate boards reduces information asymmetries. In addition, our focus on public school districts relates to recent work that studies political representation and public good provision in particular (Pande, 2003;Gyourko, 2009, 2014;Jones, 2016, 2017;Logan, 2018;Beach et al, 2018). A ubiquitous problem for empirical work that relates characteristics of board members to outcomes is that board composition is endogenously determined (Hambrick and Mason, 1984;Hermalin and Weisbach, 1998).…”