Three Essays in Political Economy and Development

Pradyot Sharma

Advisor: Timothy Groseclose, PhD, Department of Economics

Committee Members: Vincent Geloso, Thomas Stratmann

Buchanan Hall, #D180
July 01, 2026, 02:00 PM to 04:00 PM

Abstract:

This dissertation is a compilation of empirical essays on topics in political economy and economic development.

In Chapter 1, we study what we call "strict partisans"—voters who, regardless of context, always support candidates from a single party. Conventional wisdom suggests that about 80% of voters are strict partisans. To evaluate this, we exploit a little-noticed feature of U.S. elections. This is that some states give voters the option to vote “straight ticket,” which allows them—in one motion—to vote for all the candidates of a single party. We find that approximately two-thirds of the voters in our sample exercise this option, implying that the number of strict partisans is approximately 63% under a naïve interpretation. We suggest, however, that this measure is biased upward. To correct for the bias, we construct a structural econometric model in which we assume that some voters are strict partisans, while others are motivated by spatial preferences. We estimate the model with precinct-level data from the 2020 General Elections. We find that about one-fourth of the straight-ticket voters are what we call ersatz strict partisans—voters who vote according to their spatial preferences; however, they select the “straight ticket” option because all of their preferred candidates happen to be from the same party.

Chapter 2 studies how foreign aid in developing countries can impact political behavior and electoral outcomes. I study whether foreign aid delivered after the 2015 Nepal earthquake affected electoral outcomes in the 2017 federal election. Using district-level  variation in earthquake intensity and aid allocation, I examine how disaster exposure and post-earthquake recovery aid impacts vote margins and turnout. I find little evidence that aid affected turnout. Across specifications, aid is not statistically associated with changes in voter participation. In contrast, aid is positively associated with electoral margins: districts receiving more aid had modest but significantly wider margins in 2017, suggesting less competitive elections. This relationship is robust to controls for pre-earthquake partisan alignment, baseline district characteristics, distance to the earthquake epicenter, and pre-earthquake aid flows. The results suggest that externally coordinated disaster aid may not mobilize voters directly, but can influence electoral competitiveness in recipient districts.

In Chapter 3, I estimate the economic returns to broadband on the Colville Reservation in Washington State, a thin market with near-zero baseline connectivity. A tribal-led rollout beginning in 2013 expanded access in a sequence shaped by engineering feasibility and overlapping permitting authority rather than short-run income dynamics. I find that Relative to a synthetic counterfactual, American Indian per-capita income rises by about $5,500 in 2016 dollars, equivalent to 37 percent, the American Indian labor-force participation rate increases by 10.3 percentage points, and the American Indian employed share increases by 6.1 percentage points, with gains that persist through 2022. The results align with a transaction-cost mechanism in which broadband lowers search and coordination frictions and eases administrative bottlenecks in a high-friction governance environment. A back-of-the-envelope calculation implies benefit–cost ratios well above one under conservative operating-cost assumptions.