Research

Journal Article
Akhtari M, Moreira D, Trucco L. Political Turnover, Bureaucratic Turnover, and the Quality of Public Services. American Economic Review. Working Paper;112 (2) :442-93. Publisher's VersionAbstract

We study how political turnover in mayoral elections in Brazil affects public education provision. Exploiting a regression discontinuity design for close elections, we find that municipalities with a new party in office subsequently have test scores that are .05–.08 standard deviations lower. Party turnover leads to a sharp increase in the replacement rate of head-masters and teachers in schools controlled by the municipality. In contrast, turnover of the mayor’s party does not impact local (non-municipal) schools. These findings suggest that political turnover can adversely affect the quality of public services when the bureaucracy is not shielded from the political process.

 

Akhtari M, Bau N, Laliberté J-W. Affirmative Action and Pre-College Human Capital. AEJ: Applied Economics. Working Paper. Publisher's VersionAbstract

Race-based affirmative action policies are widespread in higher education. Despite the prevalence of these policies, there is little evidence on whether affirmative action policies in higher education affect students before they reach college. We exploit the 2003 Supreme Court ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger, which overturned Texas’ affirmative action ban, to study the effect of race-based affirmative action on high school students’ outcomes. Using administrative data from a large, urban school district, we find that the reinstatement of affirmative action narrowed the achievement gap between minority (black and Hispanic) and white high school students in standardized test scores, course grades, and the likelihood of taking advanced courses. Survey data suggest that students’ behavior and aspirations responded to the policy reversal. In future drafts, we will estimate the heterogeneous effects of affirmative action by location in the ability distribution and explore the effects of affirmative action in administrative data for the entire state of Texas. 

Working Paper
Akhtari M, Schwerter F. Police Use of Force and Trust. Working Paper.Abstract

A series of fatal police use of force cases have recently been in the national spotlight: Michael Brown in Missouri, Walter Scott in South Carolina, Freddie Gray in Baltimore, and so on. Regardless of the legal justification surrounding each case, there has been a strong reaction from the public. We study the effect of local police fatal use of force on trust in police, in government, and in other formal and informal institutions. We find evidence that trust in police by minorities is lower, relative to whites, when minorities compose a higher share of fatalities from police encounters in their county. In particular, minorities are responsive to the share of police fatalities that are minority but, on the other side, whites are not responsive to the share of police fatalities that are white or the share of police fatalities that are minority. There is no effect on trust in other institutions (such as trust in the local or national government, military, Supreme Court, banks, public schools, congress, and the president) and non-institutional measures of trust (such as trust in neighbors, co-workers, local shop clerks, people from different racial/ethnic groups, and trust in general). Our results suggest that minority attitudes toward the police are correlated with police behavior; the same correlation does not hold for white attitudes.

Akhtari M, Moreira D, Trucco L. Political Turnover and Bureaucratic Disruption: Evidence from Administrative, Employer-employee Matched Data in Brazil. Working Paper.Abstract

We study how political turnover, in particular a change in the political party of the mayor, in Brazil affects the turnover and profile of public employees in local governments. We find that when a new party takes office, there is inflation in the size of the bureaucracy: the share of new employees is 11 percentage points higher in municipalities with a new party in office compared to municipalities with no change in the political party. The hiring of new employees takes place within the first few months after the new party takes office and is not compensated for with a concurrent or eventual increase in the share of employees that leave the municipal government. We also document the source and destination employment of those who enter and leave the municipal government and their portfolios in terms of education, prior wages, and alignment between prior and current occupation to better understand selection into public office upon a change in the political party of the government.