Populist leaders and the economy

Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick and Christoph Trebesch

No 2169, Kiel Working Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy

Abstract: Populism at the country level is at an all-time high, with more than 25% of nations currently governed by populists. How do economies perform under populist leaders? We build a new cross-country database identifying 50 populist presidents and prime ministers 1900-2018. We find that the economic cost of populism is high. After 15 years, GDP per capita is more than 10% lower compared to a plausible non-populist counterfactual. Rising economic nationalism and protectionism, unsustainable macroeconomic policies, and institutional decay under populist rule do lasting damage to the economy.

Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/226185/1/1738278581.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Populist Leaders and the Economy (2023)
Working Paper: Populist Leaders and the Economy (2023)
Working Paper: Populist Leaders and the Economy (2023)
Working Paper: Populist Leaders and the Economy (2022)
Working Paper: Populist Leaders and the Economy (2022)
Working Paper: Populist Leaders and the Economy (2022)
Working Paper: Populist Leaders and the Economy (2020)
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:zbw:ifwkwp:2169

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Kiel Working Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().