Essays in Applied Public Economics

This dissertation focuses on two topics in applied public economics: elections and welfare programs. The first chapter provides new evidence from the US primary setting on the role of campaign resources for determining election outcomes. The second chapter examines the extent to which the candidates' strategies account for exogenous nomination rules as well as the structure of the primaries. The third chapter investigates the effect of take-up in the food stamps program from a change in benefits disbursement method implemented to decrease the cost of administering the program, curb leakages and decrease the stigma associated with program use.;There is little consensus in the literature about the effectiveness of campaigning on election outcomes. The primary focus has been on campaign spending, while little attention has been paid to the candidate's scarcest resource: their time. Using exogenous rules for delegate allocation and the underlying structure of the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries to account for the endogeneity of campaign visits, I find that campaign visits are quite effective at both increasing turnout in the election as well as the candidate's vote share.;The second chapter, joint with Achyuta Adhvaryu, examines more closely the role that election rules play for candidate strategies. We examine the extent to which the candidates visit districts that could yield a greater return given the structure of the 2008 Democratic primaries and the rules for nominating the candidate. We create a unique data set of campaign visits during the primaries and find that the candidates follow strategies that are more complex than a simply strategy would recommend. This chapter produces the instruments needed for identification of the effect of campaigning on election outcomes used in the first chapter.;The final chapter asks whether a change in disbursement method of food stamp benefits from paper stamps to an electronic card affects the take-up rate of eligible households. Take-up of food stamps benefits is roughly 60%, which begs the question why is it so low. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I exploit the discrete and differential changes in food stamp disbursement method to identify its causal effect on take-up. While the new payment method is thought to decrease stigma, I find no effect on take-up rates. I argue that the new indivisible nature of benefits decreases trafficking opportunities which may offset any decrease in stigma.