Meera Mahadevan

Title: Turning on the Lights: State Capacity in Electricity Provisioning

Abstract: State capacity is important for the provisioning of basic utilities like electricity. Yet, corruption may plague the process, leading to sub-optimal outcomes. Using confidential data on the universe of electricity consumption and billing records from a large state in India, I examine the relationship between greater state control and consumer welfare. With a close-election Regression Discontinuity Design, I demonstrate how constituencies aligned with the state government experienced a differentially higher rate of satellite measured nighttime lights than constituencies that just lost. I develop new measures of corruption using electricity billing data and propose to study whether these methods were selectively used in certain constituencies. I will model the incentive structures for governments, including ways to consolidate voter bases or gain new ones. Using exogenous price changes, I plan to estimate demand in order to make welfare calculations to understand the impacts of state capacity in electricity provision.

Connor Cole

Title: Short and Long-term Labor Market Effects of Program Eligibility Cut-Offs - Evidence from the Medicaid Program

Abstract: This paper examines theory and empirical evidence regarding the effect of program eligibility cut-offs on household labor market outcomes. Many transfer programs feature eligibility cut-offs where there is a discontinuous shift in program eligibility or benefit levels depending on a family's income or assets. While such eligibility cut-offs have been found in some programs to have clear contemporaneous labor supply effects, there is little evidence on the long-term effects of exposure to such cut-offs on labor supply decisions, family income or human capital accumulation. After demonstrating that the effects of these cut-offs depends on willingness to pay for the program in question, discounting of future consumption and the costs of adjustment, this paper turns to an empirical setting in the Medicaid program. In the 1990s, a sharp discontinuity in Medicaid eligibility rules related to child birthdate was present in many states due to a federal mandate, but it was made irrelevant by the creation of state children's health insurance programs later in the decade. This paper shows preliminary evidence that the discontinuity had a weak contemporaneous effect on a variety of labor market outcomes for parents, but had no detectable long-term effects on these outcomes after the discontinuity was removed.