TY  - JOUR
AU  - Glaeser,Edward L.
AU  - Shleifer,Andrei
TI  - The Curley Effect
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 8942
PY  - 2002
Y2  - May 2002
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8942
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8942.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Edward L. Glaeser
Department of Economics
315A Littauer Center
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-0575
Fax: 617/495-7730
E-Mail: eglaeser@harvard.edu

Andrei Shleifer
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Littauer Center M-9
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-5046
Fax: 617/496-1708
E-Mail: ashleifer@harvard.edu
AB  - James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston, used wasteful redistribution to his poor Irish constituents and incendiary rhetoric to encourage richer citizens to emigrate from Boston, thereby shaping the electorate in his favor.  Boston as a consequence stagnated, but Curley kept winning elections.  We present a model of the Curley effect, in which inefficient redistributive policies are sought not by interest groups protecting their rents, but by incumbent politicians trying to shape the electorate through emigration of their opponents or reinforcement of class identities.  The model sheds light on ethnic politics in the United States and abroad, as well as on class politics in many countries including Britain.
ER  -