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

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

Department of Economics, Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley

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.

Keywords: political opposition; TFP; Venezuela (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-04-01
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
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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