@techreport{NBERw14702,
 title = "Government Transfers and Political Support",
 author = "Marco Manacorda and Edward Miguel and Andrea Vigorito",
 institution = "National Bureau of Economic Research",
 type = "Working Paper",
 series = "Working Paper Series",
 number = "14702",
 year = "2009",
 month = "February",
 URL = "http://www.nber.org/papers/w14702",
 abstract = {We estimate the impact of a large anti-poverty cash transfer program, the Uruguayan PANES, on political support for the government that implemented it. Using the discontinuity in program assignment based on a pre-treatment eligibility score, we find that beneficiary households are 11 to 14 percentage points more likely to favor the current government relative to the previous government. Political support effects persist after the program ends. A calibration exercise indicates that these persistent impacts are consistent with a model of rational but poorly informed voters learning about politicians’ redistributive preferences.},
}