The Price of Political Opposition: Evidence from Venezuela's Maisanta

Chang-Tai Hsieh, Edward Miguel, Daniel Ortega and Francisco Rodríguez

No 14923, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In 2004, the Chávez regime in Venezuela distributed the list of several million voters whom had attempted to remove him from office throughout the government bureaucracy, allegedly to identify and punish these voters. We match the list of petition signers distributed by the government to household survey respondents to measure the economic effects of being identified as a Chavez political opponent. We find that voters who were identified as Chavez opponents experienced a 5 percent drop in earnings and a 1.5 percentage point drop in employment rates after the voter list was released. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the loss aggregate TFP from the misallocation of workers across jobs was substantial, on the order of 3 percent of GDP.

JEL-codes: N16 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
Note: EFG LS PE POL
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Published as Hsieh, Chang-Tai, Edward Miguel, Daniel Ortega, and Francisco Rodriguez. 2011. "The Price of Political Opposition: Evidence from Venezuela's Maisanta." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 3(2): 196-214. DOI: 10.1257/app.3.2.196

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Journal Article: The Price of Political Opposition: Evidence from Venezuela's Maisanta (2011)
Working Paper: The Price of Political Opposition: Evidence from Venezuela's Maisanta (2009)
Working Paper: The Price of Political Opposition: Evidence from Venezuela's Maisanta (2009)
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