Assist. Prof. Wayne Sandholtz, Ph.D.

The Politics of Public Service Reform

In this CESifo Working Paper (10633), Wayne Aaron Sandholtz studies the political consequences of a school reform in a young democracy. The paper uses random variation from a public-private school partnership which raised average test scores and other indices of school quality. Comparing vote totals in polling booths near treatment vs. control schools, it shows that the school reform caused a significant reduction in vote share for the incumbent party responsible for it. However, this does not imply that voters opposed the reform’s aims: where it caused the biggest school improvements, it also raised incumbent vote share. Instead, the negative electoral effects were associated with the opposition of teachers. In places where the reform alienated teachers the most, it also caused the biggest reductions in incumbent vote share. The paper highlights the importance of political feasibility in sustainably improving public service provision.

Mr. Sandholtz’s research agenda focuses on the political and policy dimensions of public service provision, especially in the developing world. What interventions improve service quality, and how can they be made compatible with the incentives of the policymakers charged with implementing them? In seeking answers to these questions, Mr. Sandholtz’s work spans the fields of development, education, political economy and public finance. Other current projects include a study of the effect of secondary school access on primary school achievement in Tanzania, and papers measuring the electoral impact of infrastructure projects in the US and Mexico.

Wayne Aaron Sandholtz is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Nova School of Business and Economics at Nova University of Lisbon. He earned a BA in Economics from Brigham Young University, and received his PhD in Economics from the University of California, San Diego in 2020. His work has been published in the American Economic Review. Mr. Sandholtz is a resident member of the NOVAFRICA research center, as well as a CESifo Research Network Affiliate.