Browsing by Subject "Political Economy"
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Item Embargo Electoral Markets on the Move: Essays about the Political Economy of Migration in Latin America(2025) Villamizar Chaparro, Santiago MateoHow do local politicians in the developing world respond to inflows of migrants into their constituencies? Unlike their counterparts in the developing world, most local politicians in the Global South tend to have very binding budgetary restrictions that constrain the set of possibilities and policies they can enact. With the inflow of new individuals into their municipalities, the question of how to deal with this increased demand for social services becomes key, as does the economic and social integration of migrants. In this dissertation, I draw on research from political inequality, migration, and political economy to understand how local politicians use the arrival of migrants strategically for their own gain. I argue that local politicians try to include or exclude migrant populations within their municipalities through the manipulation of a series of tools. Particularly local spending, regulation, and party platforms or through their choice of political rhetoric. I test this argument by studying three different migratory movements across two Latin American countries. First, focusing on the Brazilian case, I study how historical migration flows from Europeans determine the contemporary geography of support for affirmative action that cues politicians about the types of political regulations they should support. This chapter also shows how the historical choices of migration policy can have effects that expand for decades. Second, I analyze under what circumstances local Colombian politicians include internally displaced people in their informal networks of good distribution and vote-buying. Lastly, focusing on the arrival of millions of Venezuelans into Colombia, I analyze the conditions under which mayoral candidates use xenophobic rhetoric for electoral gain. The empirical sections of this study combine qualitative and quantitative methods with a series of original data collection exercises like surveys, the digitization of historical archives, and social media scrapping along with pre-existing public opinion and administrative data to test the argument. Overall, I find that exposure to European migrant settlements correlates with lower support for affirmative action, that local politicians will only incorporate internal migrants in clientelistic schemes in noncompetitive environments, and that politicians will engage in xenophobic rhetoric as a result of labor market competition between natives and migrants. Understanding these results presents an important step in understanding migrant political, economic, and social incorporation in the Global South.
Item Embargo Essays on Organized Crime and Political Capture in Development Economics(2024) Rodriguez Hurtado, IgnacioThis dissertation explores three topics covering the economics of crime and political economy within the field of development economics. In the first research chapter, I explore how the number of criminal organizations impacts homicides and school dropout. To do so, I the number and locations of large Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs) in Mexico. I use instrumental variables in a selection model which models DTO entry. The instruments are based on the distance to DTOs' existing networks. I find more DTOs increase homicides and school dropout. Furthermore the pattern of results suggest more DTOs cause more students to dropout via an opportunity cost channel, with students leaving school to join criminal activities.
The second research chapter examines the important of transport costs for DTOs within Mexico. DTOs in Mexico engage in a wide variety of activities, including producing drugs within Mexico using illicit crops grown in Mexico. Here, I explore whether or not lower transport costs for these illicit inputs results in more crime. I use variation in travel times induced by landslides to identify the effects of lower transport costs in a panel data setting. I find that lower transport costs increase homicides, while it reduces robberies in areas more likely to be involved in the drug trade.
The final chapter focuses on political economy. This chapter, co-authored with Kate Vyborny and Sadia Hussain, examines political favoritism in public procurement programs. Government procurement programs represents a significant share of output worldwide, however, these public procurement programs have high potential for corruption and political capture. We study political favoritism in the context of government procurement of wheat from farmers in Punjab, Pakistan. Using a panel fixed effects approach, we show that wheat procurement increases in governing party constituencies when the government procurement price is high relative to world prices.
Item Open Access Faith in the Future and Social Conflict: Economic Growth as a Mechanism for Political Stabilization(2014-04-16) Bloedel, AlexanderThis paper studies the mechanisms that link sociopolitical conflict and (expectations about) economic prosperity. Motivated by a large body of empirical and historical work on the correlation between economic development and democratization, I develop a game-theoretic model of economic growth with political economy constraints. In an economy where low income agents are credit constrained, rapid and robust economic growth leads to increasing inequality early on, but provides the means to mitigate civil conflict when inequality becomes sufficiently large. The rate and persistence of growth similarly determines the stability of extant political institutions and the ability to transition from dictatorship to democracy.Item Open Access Models of Other-Regarding Preferences and Redistribution(2017-11-16) Dimick, M; Rueda, D; Stegmueller, D