WHEN a visitor starts emphasising the historical links between their families, Carlos Edde, a Lebanese politician, knows where the conversation is headed. Twenty minutes in, the visitor’s tone of voice shifts: “I’ve come to see you because I need a favour.” In Lebanon politicians find employment for their constituents in exchange for votes. Three quarters of university students surveyed by the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies thought political connections were important to find jobs; 20% said that they had used them.
These days Mr Edde says that he never does more than forward a CV to one of his business contacts, without any pressure to hire. Anecdotal evidence suggests other politicians push harder (and win more votes—Mr Edde’s party has no MPs). Quantifying the damage caused by such string-pulling is tough.
A new working paper by Ishac Diwan at Paris Sciences et Lettres, a university, and Jamal Haidar of Harvard University, has a go. Using administrative data on every registered company in Lebanon between 2005 and 2010, they painstakingly map links between the people registered as the owners or officers of companies and...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2a31bvr
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