"Educated Politicians: Effects on Performance and Fiscal Policy" with Marta Curto Highly educated citizens are dramatically over-represented among politicians. Is this bias desirable, troubling or irrelevant? Recent studies argue that highly educated politicians perform better in office, but others find no effects. We advance a third possibility which is that education affects the preferences and beliefs of politicians, and leads them to pursue different goals and fiscal policies. Our empirical analysis is based on a novel dataset with information about the education, age and gender of elected local politicians in Spain and detailed economic and fiscal data collected between 2003 and 2011. Applying a Regression Discontinuity design, we find that when parties with more educated politicians win the election, municipalities have higher unemployment rates and do not perform better in other respects. Further analyses reveal that educated politicians are more fiscally conservative, spend less in capital investment, and prioritize different spending areas. Our results are consistent with the interpretation that more educated politicians are more fiscally conservative rather than with the claim that education is a proxy of quality. To conclude, we discuss how the elitism in the educational composition of governments can undermine political representation. Draft available on request
"From Job Polarization to Political Discontent?: Political Consequences of technological change" with Thomas Kürer Despite a very lively academic and public debate about the potentially disruptive transformation of workplaces due to digitalization and automation, we know little about the political consequences of technological change. Do citizens in workplaces undergoing rapid digitalization change their political attitudes and behavior? We study the impact of digitalization on the political attitudes of workers in the UK. Unlike previous studies that use occupational data as proxies of risk, we collect indicators of ICT capital stocks at the industry level, a more direct measure of digitalization, and merge them with individual-level panel data from the British Household Panel Study and the Understanding Society surveys between 1997 and 2015. First, we confirm that digitalization produces polarization in labor market outcomes between highly and less educated workers. Next, we document similar divergence in political outcomes. Digitalization is associated with higher turnout for highly skilled workers. Among workers with low education levels, digitalization reduces turnout, and increases support for UKIP. Our analyses suggest that the ongoing wave of technological change may be contributing to the increasing political discontent of unskilled workers, the political divergence between urban technological hubs and left-behind territories, and to the rise of protest politics. Draft available on request
The political legacies of violence: Evidence from the Spanish Civil War With Laia Balcells, Elena Costas, Catherine de Vries and Hector Solaz Presentation available on request
ONGOING RESEARCH PROJECTS
Local politicians: Selection and performance (as Principal Investigator) Team: Marta Curto, Elena Costas, Alba Huidobro, Yeimy Ospina, Ana Tur-Prats, and Didac Queralt Research grant (CSO2016-79569-P) started in January 2017
Digital technology, ideological polarization and intolerance With Ruben Enikolopov (PI), Maria Petrova and Ruben Durante Research grant (BBVA Foundation) started in January 2018
Digitalization and political attitudes With José Fernández-Albertos (PI), Dulce Manzano and Alex Kuo Development of a survey questionnaire Research grant (CSO2013-48451-R)