Are directors who govern natural resources biased towards their home districts? The literature predicts that they will be but we argue that mixed-territorial seat allocation can attenuate directors’ incentives for home bias. When a regional director represents one community among several directors competing for a fixed budget, advocating for one’s own community is constrained and thus directors are dissuaded from rent-seeking behaviours. We test our theory using the Columbia Basin Trust, a natural resource fund that distributes compensation for hydropower development across southeastern British Columbia. Using synthetic control methods to estimate the Trust’s effect on regional development, and a 2000 to 2025 panel of grants matched to board membership, we find positive developmental returns and no evidence of home-district bias. Communities with place-based representation fare no better than those without, and this holds whether that director holds an official regional appointment or a provincial appointment without an assigned territory. Our findings demonstrate that board-level institutional design is consequential for the success of development and redistribution.
Research
Automated Detection of Emotion in Central Bank Communication: A Warning
Council Checks of the Commission under the European Semester
(with Mark Hallerberg)
[Read More about Council Checks of the Commission under the European Semester]Central Bank Communication as Public Opinion? Experimental Evidence
(with Dominik Duell and Will Lowe)
[Read More about Central Bank Communication as Public Opinion? Experimental Evidence]Divided Committees and Strategic Vagueness
(with Colin Krainin)
[Read More about Divided Committees and Strategic Vagueness]Opportunistic, not Optimal Delegation: The Political Origins of Central Bank Independence
(with Julia Gray and Jakob Willisch)
[Read More about Opportunistic, not Optimal Delegation: The Political Origins of Central Bank Independence]