Person:

Pons, Vincent

This paper provides the first estimate of the effect of door-to-door canvassing on actual electoral outcomes, via a countrywide experiment embedded in François Hollande's campaign in the 2012 French presidential election. While existing experiments randomized door-to-door visits at the individual level, the scale of this campaign (five million doors knocked) enabled randomization by precinct, the level at which vote shares are recorded administratively. Visits did not affect turnout but increased Hollande's vote share in the first round and accounted for one-fourth of his victory margin in the second. Visits' impact persisted in later elections, suggesting a lasting persuasion effect.

In French parliamentary and local elections, candidates ranked first and second in the first round automatically qualify for the second round, while a third candidate qualifies only when selected by more than 12.5 percent of registered citizens. Using a fuzzy RDD around this threshold, we find that the third candidate’s presence substantially increases the share of registered citizens who vote for any candidate and reduces the vote share of the top two candidates. It disproportionately harms the candidate ideologically closest to the third and causes her defeat in one fifth of the races. Additional evidence suggests that these results are driven by voters who value voting expressively over voting strategically for the top-two candidate they dislike the least to ensure her victory; and by third candidates who, absent party-level agreements leading to their dropping out, value the benefits associated with competing in the second round more than influencing its outcome.

A large-scale randomized experiment conducted during the 2012 French presidential and parliamentary elections shows that voter registration requirements have significant effects on turnout, resulting in unequal participation. We assigned 20,500 apartments to one control or six treatment groups that received canvassing visits providing either information about registration or help to register at home. While both types of visits increased registration, home registration visits had a higher impact than information-only visits, indicating that both information costs and administrative barriers impede registration. Home registration did not reduce turnout among those who would have registered anyway. On the contrary, citizens registered due to the visits became more interested in and knowledgeable about the elections as a result of being able to participate in them, and 93% voted at least once in 2012. The results suggest that easing registration requirements could substantially enhance political participation and interest while improving representation of all groups.

Connecting private dwellings to the water main is expensive and typically cannot be publicly financed. We show that households' willingness to pay for a private connection is high when it can be purchased on credit, not because a connection improves health but because it increases the time available for leisure and reduces inter- and intra-household conflicts on water matters, leading to sustained improvements in well-being. Our results suggest that facilitating access to credit for households to finance lump sum quality-of-life investments can significantly increase welfare, even if those investments do not result in any health or income gains. (JEL D12, I31, O12, O13, O18, Q25)

Background Improving patients’ tuberculosis (TB) knowledge is a salient component of TB control strategies. Patient knowledge of TB may encourage infection prevention behaviors and improve treatment adherence. The purpose of this study is to examine how TB knowledge and infection prevention behaviors change over the course of treatment. Methods A matched patient-health worker dataset (n = 6,031) of publicly treated TB patients with NGO-provided treatment support health workers was compiled in nine Indian cities from March 2013 to September 2014. At the beginning and end of TB treatment, patients were asked about their knowledge of TB symptoms, transmission, and treatment and infection prevention behaviors. Results Patients beginning TB treatment (n = 3,424) demonstrated moderate knowledge of TB; 52.5% (50.8%, 54.2%) knew that cough was a symptom of TB and 67.2% (65.6%, 68.7%) knew that TB was communicable. Overall patient knowledge was significantly associated with literacy, education, and income, and was higher at the end of treatment than at the beginning (3.7%, CI: 3.02%, 4.47%). Infection prevention behaviors like covering a cough (63.4%, CI: 61.2%, 65.0%) and sleeping separately (19.3%, CI: 18.0%, 20.7%) were less prevalent. The age difference between patient and health worker as well as a shared language significantly predicted patient knowledge and adherence to infection prevention behaviors. Conclusions Social proximity between health worker and patients predicted greater knowledge and adherence to infection prevention behaviors but the latter rate remains undesirably low.

Improving the political participation of immigrants could advance their interests and foster their integration into receiving countries. In this study, 23,800 citizens were randomly assigned to receive visits from political activists during the lead-up to the 2010 French regional elections. Treatment increased the turnout of immigrants without having any statistically significant effect on non-immigrants, while turnout was roughly equal in the control group. A postelectoral survey reveals that immigrants initially had less political information, which could explain the heterogeneous impact. Although the effect decays over subsequent elections, our findings suggest that voter outreach efforts can successfully increase immigrants' political participation, even when they do not specifically target their communities and concerns.