BUSCADOR RECOLECTA

We exploit an original dataset from a referendum in Peru to study the influence of voting “arrangements” on electoral outcomes. The relative importance of these arrangements (e.g. ballot design) with respect to the fundamentals (e.g. ideology, candidates’ quality) has not been measured. After controlling for a comprehensive set of politicians’ characteristics, we estimate unbiased ballot order effects making use of the within party variation in outcomes. We estimate a non-linear proba-bility model and we create counterfactuals to conclude that ballot design not only may have changed the electoral results but also has a greater importance than candidates’ ideology, education, experience and party affiliation., This work was supported by ECO2017-85763-R (AEI/FEDER, UE).

Since the beginning of the 21st century, many Latin American countries have been ruled by
governments characterized as populist (the so-called new Latin American Left). We focus on
the macroeconomic implications of the policies adopted by these governments (instead of their
leaders’ rhetoric) and we investigate to what extent this characterization holds. In particular, we
focus on their wage policies by doing a Structural Vector Autoregressive analysis and assuming
that populist shocks have no long-run effects on real wages. This identification implies that
populist leaders prioritize redistribution through nominal wages disregarding the evolution of
productivity. The results indicate that economic populism is not as widespread as previously
thought. Instead, our approach leads to more nuanced results: while we find that there is
populism in Argentina, the results for Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador show only sporadic populist
events. In the remaining countries, we do not find persistent economic populism., ‘‘La Caixa’’ Foundation, under agreement LCF/PR/PR13/51080004. AEI/FEDER
grant ECO2017-85763-R.