We know little about the electoral effects of policies with broad appeal that are implemented by popular leaders, but which have adverse economics effects. We analyze voter behavior following one such policy implemented in the world’s largest democracy — India’s 2016 ‘Demonetization,’ which unexpectedly made 86% of the currency-in-circulation redundant overnight, and led to severe cash shortages and economic hardship in subsequent months. Yet, the policy appealed to a majority of voters, and was framed as one that would combat corruption. We leverage a discontinuity in the number of bank branches arising from a nationwide, district-level bank expansion policy. Using the fact that districts with fewer banks had greater cash shortages, we identify the impacts of demonetization’s economic severity at the bank-expansion cutoff. Regression discontinuity estimates show that following demonetization, voters in places with more severe demonetization had less favorable views of the policy. Using a difference-in discontinuity design, we find that the ruling party performed relatively worse in regions with more severe demonetization, receiving a 4.7 percentage point lower fraction of votes, and were relatively less likely to win seats in state legislatures. Areas that were historically strongly aligned with the ruling party were nearly unresponsive in voting behavior, despite having a less favorable view of the policy itself.

Canonical models of entry into crime emphasize occupational sorting on economic incentives. We attempt to isolate the occupation-choice dimension of criminal participation responses to disincentives for formal employment. We link administrative socioeconomic microdata with the universe of arrests in Medell´ın over a decade, and exploit exogenous variation in formal-sector employment around a socioeconomic-score cutoff, below which individuals receive benefits if not formally employed. We model the various mechanisms by which the policy variation we study could affect both idiosyncratic and occupational criminality. Regression discontinuity estimates confirm this policy unintentionally reduced formal-sector employment and generated a corresponding increase in arrests associated with criminal enterprise activity. Consistent with an occupational choice interpretation as modeled, we find no effects on crimes unlikely to be associated with organized entities, such as crimes of impulse or opportunity. Effects on arrests are strongest in neighborhoods with more opportunities to join criminal enterprises.

We investigate the effects of job displacement, as a result of mass-layoffs, on criminal arrests using a novel matched employer-employee-crime dataset from Medellín, Colombia. Job displacement leads to immediate and persistent earnings losses, and higher probability of arrest for both the displaced worker and family members. Effects are pronounced for young men for whom opportunities in criminal enterprises are prevalent. Leveraging a banking policy-reform, we find that greater access to credit attenuates the criminal response to job loss. Additional results on heterogeneity and types of crime are also consistent with economic incentives contributing to criminal participation decisions.

Evidence suggests that natural resources have driven conflict and underdevelopment in modern Africa. We show that this relationship exists primarily when neighboring regions are resourcerich. When neighbors are resource-poor, own resources instead drive economic growth. To motivate the empirical study of this set of facts, we present a simple model of parties engaged in potential conflict over resources, revealing that economic prosperity is a function of equilibrium conflict prevalence, determined not just by a region’s own resources but also by the resources of its neighbors. Structural estimates confirm the model’s predictions, and reveal that conflict equilibria are more prevalent where institutional quality is worse.

There is growing awareness that development-oriented government policies may be an important counterinsurgency strategy, but existing papers are usually unable to disentangle various mechanisms. Using a regression-discontinuity design, we analyze the impact of one of the world's largest anti-poverty programs, India's NREGS, on the intensity of Maoist conflict. We find short-run increases of insurgency-related violence, police-initiated attacks, and insurgent attacks on civilians. We discuss how these results relate to established theories in the literature. One mechanism consistent with the empirical patterns is that NREGS induces civilians to share more information with the state, improving police effectiveness.