Criminal Politicians and Deforestation: Causal Evidence from India
Abstract: This paper examines linkages between the criminalization of politics and deforestation on the local level in India, with the ambition of contributing to the emerging corruption-environment nexus in development research. We combine satellite data on forest cover with state assembly election outcomes and criminal records of candidates into a panel of Indian constituencies spanning from 2004 to 2014. Implementing a novel close-election regression discontinuity design, our study provides the first causal evidence of environmental costs due to a criminal politician coming to power. We find that barely electing a criminal politician results in about 3.1 - 3.8 percentage points lower annual forest cover growth over the course of the election term. Albeit limited to competitive elections, results suggest that this effect accumulates and translates to deforestation over time. Together with tendencies of more accentuated negative estimates in highly corrupt and least developed states, this indicates that the effect operates through institutional channels.
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