The Cost of Populism: Evidence from history

Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick and Christoph Trebesch

No 15, ECONtribute Policy Brief Series from University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany

Abstract: The rise of populism in the past two decades has motivated much work on its drivers, but less is known about its economic and political consequences. This column uses a comprehensive cross-country database on populism dating back to 1900 to offer a historical, long-run perspective. It shows that (1) populism has a long history and is serial in nature – if countries have been governed by a populist once, they are much more likely to see another populist coming to office in the future; (2) populist leadership is economically costly, with a notable long-run decline in consumption and output; and (3) populism is politically disruptive, fostering instability and institutional decay. The analysis suggests that populism is here to stay.

Pages: 8 pages
Date: 2021-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro, nep-his and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econtribute.de/RePEc/ajk/ajkpbs/ECONtribute_PB_015_2021.pdf First version, 2021 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ajk:ajkpbs:015

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ECONtribute Policy Brief Series from University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany Niebuhrstrasse 5, 53113 Bonn, Germany.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ECONtribute Office ().