Hierarchy, Identity, and Collective Action

Group identities are pervasive in modern politics under both democratic and populist regimes. We explore the manner in which the size and geography of social groups influences spending on public goods and its distribution across space. We do this theoretically using a model of collective action and empirically by applying the model to Indian census data from 1991-2001. Our main innovation is to model groups as coordinating the actions of their members across locations, since identities cut across village boundaries. This gives us very different results from the standard approach of autarkic choices.