APL (Ajiken Power Lunch)

APL (Ajiken Power Lunch) is a lunchtime workshop open to public, including IDE staffs, visiting research fellows, IDEAS students, outside researchers and graduate students. This workshop provides a platform for presentation of any work in progress where we can discuss in either English or Japanese.

Those who would attend a seminar are asked to announce yourself to receptionists on your arrival at the IDE and to obtain APL Organizers' signature on your admission card after the seminar.

August 4, 2016. (Thursday) 12：30-14：00

Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization C23 Meeting Room 　

Political Representation, Redistribution, and Regional Development: Assessing the Development Rationale for Legislative Malapportionment in Brazil

This presentation examines the relationship between legislative malapportionment, redistribution, and regional economic development. One of the primary justifications for legislative malapportionment—the disparity between the share of legislative seats and the share of the national population—is the promotion of poor regions’ economic development by means of favorable allocations of resources through overrepresentation. Using the case of Brazil, this presentation evaluates the theoretical argument and the empirical validity of the presumed mechanism linking unequal representation to regional development and economic convergence. The findings indicate that: (1) overrepresented districts are not necessarily poor, although some correlation exists between the two; (2) overrepresented jurisdictions do receive disproportionate shares of resources from the federal government; and (3) disproportionate resource transfers attributable to overrepresentation and dependence on resource transfers do not help economic development of the recipient jurisdictions. On the contrary, they seem to hinder the development potential of those regions receiving them.

Professor Taeko Hiroi (University of Texas at El Paso)

Hirokazu KIKUCHI

English