Research | Ahmed Chaudhry

2024

Do Limits to Campaign Contribution Laws Affect Welfare Policy? Evidence from the US States

Ahmed Chaudhry

Under Review, 2024

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How do campaign contribution laws affect pro-welfare policies? The US political system is highly unequal as policy preferences of high-income citizens are often prioritized compared to that of low-income groups. Therefore, it is widely believed that interest groups – corporations, PACs, and labor unions – employ campaign contributions as a bargaining tool to obtain access, favor, or vote by political candidates. Evidence shows that restricting money in politics via stricter campaign contribution laws can reduce the bargaining power of interest groups over candidates and increase the say of low-income groups in policy matters. Therefore, the effect of stricter contribution laws should also manifest as a shift towards relatively pro-welfare policies. This paper analyzes the relationship between stricter campaign contribution laws and pro-welfare policy across the state-wide legislative races from 1980 to 2018, exploiting the heterogeneity of laws across the US states. The legislative power of state representatives on minimum wage and earned income tax credit policies makes them a good proxy of a state’s welfare policy; alternative welfare policy proxies are also employed. The empirical results from the two-way fixed-effects model and the interactive fixed-effects counterfactual estimator indicate that stricter campaign contribution laws lead to higher minimum wage at the state level. Not as strong, but the estimates also suggest that more stringent contribution laws in a state result in a relatively generous EITC rate as a percentage of the federal rate. The effect of stricter laws on welfare policy generosity is also evident when alternative state welfare policy proxies are used. The empirical estimates withstand a variety of robustness tests.
The Nexus Between Political Ideology and IMF Interventions: A Reciprocal Relationship

Ahmed Chaudhry, and Firat Demir

Under Review, 2024

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In this paper, we examine three questions. First, we explore how governments’ economic ideology, specifically left-wing, centrist, and right-wing partisanship, influences their decisions to participate in International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs. Second, we study how this partisanship affects the depth and breadth of IMF program conditions. Third, we examine how IMF programs and conditionality requirements influence the likelihood of political parties from the left-, right-, or centrist ideologies remaining in or coming into power. Employing an instrumental variable approach to address the endogeneity of IMF programs and conditions, we find that left-wing governments are less likely to enter IMF programs, while the opposite is true for right-wing governments, with no significant effect observed for centrist governments. Furthermore, left-wing governments likely face fewer conditionality requirements, whereas right-wing governments face more conditions. Lastly, we demonstrate that a higher burden of conditionality requirements reduces the chances of left-wing or centrist parties staying in or gaining office while boosting the likelihood for right-wing parties.
The Effects of Political Ideology on Export Diversification and Productive Capabilities

Ahmed Chaudhry, and Firat Demir

Under Review, 2024

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This article studies the effect of left-wing, right-wing, and centrist economic ideologies on export sophistication and productive capabilities across countries. Productive capabilities and export sophistication reflect the ability of an economy to produce and export a wide variety of sophisticated products and are shown to be strong determinants of long-run economic development and growth. The governing political party’s ideology plays a crucial role in shaping a nation’s economic policies, which ultimately impacts its productive capabilities and long run economic development. Based on the two-stage least-squares instrumental variables method, our empirical analysis suggests a significantly negative effect of right-wing governments and a significantly positive effect for centrist governments on the productive capabilities of a country. We do not find any effect of left-wing governments. These results are robust to a rich battery of sensitivity tests.
Does Flu Vaccination Affect Wages? State-Level Evidence from the US

Pallab Ghosh, Firat Demir, Myongjin Kim, Ahmed Chaudhry, and Junying Zhao

Under Review, 2024

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This paper examines the effects of state-level adult and child seasonal flu vaccination rates on hourly real wages for women. Using an IV method to address possible endogeneity, we find a significantly positive effect of adult vaccination on women’s wages. Furthermore, we show that this effect is stronger for working mothers age groups 16-24 and 25-44, and those with younger children aged 6 months-12 years. We also find that children’s vaccination has a significantly positive effect on mothers’ wages and that this effect is stronger for women with younger children. The results also show that the positive effect is particularly larger for non-college educated women, aged 16-44 with at least one child. These effects are also stronger for mothers with younger children.
Effects of CDC Recommendation on HPV Vaccine Uptake 2010 – 2015

Pallab Ghosh, Ahmed Chaudhry, Firat Demir, Myongjin Kim, Junying Zhao, and 1 more author

Frontiers in Public Health, 2024

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This study evaluates the impact of US CDC’s HPV vaccine recommendations on male adults and children. This study uses the 2010-2015 US National Health Interview Survey to evaluate the before-after policy change effect of HPV recommendation on an individual’s probability of HPV vaccination. Dummy regression analyses with fixed effects show that HPV vaccine policy is significantly associated with a 14.7% increase in the likelihood of HPV vaccination for men aged 11-21. HPV vaccine recommendations are also associated with modest spillover effects, i.e., a 5.6% increased likelihood for men aged 22-25 and marginally for men aged 26-60. African American men and men with poor health are 2.7% and 15.4% less likely to uptake HPV vaccines than white men and men with good or fair health, respectively. Findings offer comprehensive evidence of the effectiveness and spillover effects of this type of federal-level policy, provide policy lessons for other vaccines, and identify vulnerable subpopulations as targets for future interventions.
Who Rules the World? The Myth of Multipolarity and The Real Drivers of Leadership in International Organizations

Ahmed Chaudhry, Firat Demir, Omar S. Dahi, Ricardo S. Diaz, Van Jackson, and 1 more author

Work in Progress, 2024
Effect of Campaign Contribution Laws on State-Level Economic Development Incentives

Ahmed Chaudhry

Work in Progress, 2024
Impact of Political Ideology on (De)Militarization

Ahmed Chaudhry, and Anthony Mayberry

Work in Progress, 2024
Covid-19 and Food Insecurity in Pakistan

Ahmed Chaudhry

Work in Progress, 2024

2019

Political competition and economic policy: empirical evidence from Pakistan

Ahmed Chaudhry, and Ummad Mazhar

Economics, 2019

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The influence of politics on economic policy is not fully understood. The challenge to ensure political inclusiveness and economic prosperity remains. Perhaps, one way to attain this objective is by increasing political competition. This paper gathers empirical evidence from Pakistan, a country with a checkered political history characterized by episodes of representative, non-representative, and indirectly elected governments. In recent years, the country has witnessed a gradual strengthening of democratic rules with economic progress. Focusing on nine elections held over 1970 to 2015 the authors measure political competition and estimate its impact on economic policy. Contrary to popular conceptions about Pakistan’s economy, they find a positive association between lack of political competition and poor economic policy. This finding holds at national as well as subnational levels in Pakistan and withstands a number of robustness tests.