Populism, Political Risk and the Economy: Lessons from Italy

Pierluigi Balduzzi, Emanuele Brancati, Marco Brianti and Fabio Schiantarelli

No 989, Boston College Working Papers in Economics from Boston College Department of Economics

Abstract: We study the effects on financial markets and real economic activity of changes in risk related to political events and policy announcements in Italy during the 2013-2019 period that saw the rise to power of populist parties. We focus on events that have implications for budgetary policy, debt sustainability and for Euro membership. We use changes in the Credit Default Swaps (CDS) spreads on governments bonds around those dates as an instrument for shocks to policy and institutional risk – political risk for short – in the context of Local Projections - IV. We show that shocks associated with the rise of populist forces or their policies have adverse and sizable effects on financial markets. These negative effects were moderated by the European institutions and domestic constitutional constraints. In addition, Italian political developments generate international spillover effects on the spreads of other eurozone countries. Finally, political risk shocks have a negative impact on the real economy, although the accommodating stance of monetary policy helped in cushioning them.

Keywords: populism; political risk; policy uncertainty; sovereign debt; fiscal policy; CDS spread (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E44 G10 H62 H63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-12-01, Revised 2020-04-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-mac and nep-opm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Populism, Political Risk and the Economy: Lessons from Italy (2020)
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