Do Educated Leaders Affect Economic Growth? Evidence from India

• In Event: The Political Economy of Education in the Developing World

Abstract

We study the impact of electing an educated politician to state legislative assemblies on economic growth in the politician's constituency. Intensity of night lights is used to proxy for constituency-level economic activity and data on all politicians contesting state elections between 2008 and 2013 is used. Our identification strategy is based on a regression discontinuity design that exploits quasi-experimental election outcomes of close elections between educated and less-educated politicians. We find that having a graduate state representative increases the growth rate of night lights by about 2 percentage points in the constituency. Though statistically significant, the impact on economic activity of having an educated leader is substantially lower than that of having a woman or non-criminally accused leader. Further, the effect of educated leaders is heterogeneous depending on the initial level of development of the state. Our findings have implications for recent policy changes mandating minimum education requirements of leaders in some states of India.

Author

• Soham Sahoo