经济与社会研究院SEMINAR第107期

题目：Winter is Coming: Early-life Experiences and Politicians’ Decisions

主讲人：梁平汉，中山大学

时间： 2018年10月16日， 15:15-16:30

地点：暨南大学中惠楼102室

主讲人简介：

梁平汉，中山大学政治与公共事务管理学院教授，博士生导师，西班牙巴塞罗那自治大学经济学博士。研究领域为博弈论、实验经济学、政治经济学、发展经济学等。曾在Games and Economic Behavior, Journal of Comparative Economics, Review of Development Economics, 《经济研究》、《管理世界》、《经济学》（季刊）、《世界经济》等国内外权威核心学术期刊上独立（第一作者）发表论文十余篇。获教育部高等院校青年教师奖，入选“第十一批四川省学术和技术带头人后备人选”，主持国家自然科学基金项目。

Abstract：

The preferences of politician matter in policy-making. This paper focuses on the role of local politicians’ early-life experiences in their policy decisions in office. We exploit the China’s Great Famine from 1959 to 1961 as a natural experiment and examine the fiscal decisions of those county Party secretaries who experienced the famine in early childhood. The results indicate that if the secretary experienced a severer famine that decreased the agricultural population by 10% during their early childhood, other things being equal, they will spend 6.8% more on agriculture and 10.6% more on social security. Moreover, a 10% severer famine experienced during their early childhood decreases agricultural tax by 38.8% and VAT by 5.6%. Further, the long-term impact of secretaries early-childhood exposure to the famine comes from the preference formation, instead of their beliefs about future similar events. Counterfactual experiments suggest that these preferences changes have substantial influence on Chinese agriculture. To examine the channel of famine effect, we exploit the household survey data with a particular focus on Communist Party members. Analyses show that famine experience changes their relevant attitudes significantly.