TY - JOUR AU - Jones, Daniel B AU - Troesken, Werner AU - Walsh, Randall TI - A Poll Tax by any Other Name: The Political Economy of Disenfranchisement JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 18612 PY - 2012 Y2 - December 2012 DO - 10.3386/w18612 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18612 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18612.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Daniel B. Jones Department of Economics University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA 15260 E-Mail: dbj3@pitt.edu Werner Troesken E-Mail: N/A user is deceased Randall Walsh Department of Economics University of Pittsburgh 4901 WW Posvar Hall 230 S. Bouquet St. Pittsburgh, PA 15260 Tel: 412/648-1737 Fax: 412/648-3011 E-Mail: walshr@pitt.edu AB - In this paper, we examine the political economy of voting rights in the American South. We begin by measuring the impact of both formal laws and informal modes of voter suppression on African-American political participation. In contrast to prior research, we find evidence that both formal and informal modes of voter suppression were important and mutually reinforcing. Part of our analysis includes explicitly identifying the magnitude and causal effects of lynching on black voter participation. We then turn to analyzing to the relatively unexplored question of how disenfranchisement-and the accompanying shifts in political power-affected policy outcomes, congressional voting, and partisan control of state and federal legislatures. ER -