This paper investigates whether political incentives affect the government's response during a health epidemic and the subsequent effects on citizens' voting behavior. Leveraging novel data, I study this question in the context of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Liberia. The national incumbent government appropriately prioritized the allocation of resources to villages affected by the epidemic. By building a spatiotemporal epidemiological model that estimates the ex-ante optimal allocation of relief efforts, there is also evidence that resources were misallocated toward electoral swing villages. Instead, no resources were diverted toward core supporters or co-ethnic villages. Voters, in turn, reacted by rewarding the national incumbent party in areas where additional resources were misallocated.

本文研究了政治诱因是否会影响健康流行期间政府的反应以及对公民投票行为的后续影响。利用新颖的数据，我在2014年利比里亚埃博拉疫情的背景下研究了这个问题。任职国家政府适当地将资源分配给受该流行病影响的村庄。通过建立时空流行病学模型来估计事前最佳的救济工作分配，也有证据表明资源被错误分配给选举摇摆村。相反，没有资源被转移到核心支持者或同种族的村庄。反过来说，选民的反应是在分配额外资源的地区奖励全国现任政党。