The Political Costs of Government Expropriation
3:00pm
Room 3301 (via lifts 17-18), Academic Building, HKUST

Abstract

What are the political consequences of government expropriation? And what are the possible economic explanations for these consequences? By using land expropriation in China intensively implemented by local governments as a natural experiment, this study employs a generalized difference-in-differences approach to exploit the political consequences of extractive government behaviors. The empirical results indicate that land expropriation would decrease individuals’ trust towards local government officials by about 10 percent of a standard deviation and increase the probability of having conflict with local officials by about 3 percent (sample mean is 3.92 percent). More importantly, the two causal relationships exist, persistently. These relationships could possibly be explained by low compensation of land expropriation itself and by negative impact on household welfare due to land expropriation. The results have implications for regime legitimacy and local governance in China.

When
Where
Room 3301 (via lifts 17-18), Academic Building, HKUST
Language
English
Speakers / Performers:
Mr. SHA Wenbiao
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