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Talk: Something to Complain About: How Minority Representatives Overcome Ethnic Differences 

We study the costs of ethnic differences between local politicians and examine ways tomitigate them. Using data from over 100,000 local politicians in India, we establish – via a regression discontinuity design – that delivery of key public goods suffers when ethnic minority(low-caste) representatives govern under non-minority (high-caste) representatives. We then study an institutional innovation that mitigates these adverse consequences. In our setting,local politicians can file complaints with the higher bureaucracy under a formal complaintstechnology. We establish that low-caste politicians use the technology, filing over twice as many complaints when exogenously paired with high-caste superiors. Does filing complaints improveoutcomes, though? We run a large field experiment involving 1629 low-caste representatives where we randomize offers to file complaints on their behalf. Treated jurisdictions see a 26%rise in public good projects, accounting for 79% of the initial gap in provision, with positive spillovers onto neighboring jurisdictions.

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https://tinyurl.com/y59hepzg

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