WORKING PAPERS
"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 and Nikolas Schöll
This paper studies the economic and political consequences of digitalization at the workplace. We employ an innovative empirical strategy that combines individual-level panel data from the United Kingdom with time-varying indicators of digitalization at the industry level to shed light on this question. We first assess the distributional consequences of technological change and find that technology is economically beneficial for a majority of the workforce in the 1997-2015 period. Wages increase for all but the less qualified workers and adverse employment effects are very limited. We then demonstrate that exposure to digitalization increased voter turnout and support for the Conservatives among highly educated workers, especially after 2010. An instrumental variable analysis, placebo tests using non-ICT capital stocks and multiple robustness checks add confidence to a causal interpretation of the results. Our findings indicate that the political consequences of technological change are more multi-faceted than the dominant narrative of the "revenge of the left-behind" suggests.
Draft available on request
Gendered language in Political Communication: A Machine Learning Approach
With Javier Beltrán and Alba Huidobro
Do male and female politicians communicate with the public in different ways? And does the public address politicians differently depending on their gender? This paper analyses gender biases in political communication between elected politicians and citizens using a large corpus of text. We collected over 800.000 tweets written by or addressed to members of the Spanish national and regional Parliaments between December 2017 and June 2018. We apply Lasso logistic regression models to examine if politicians from different genders speak and are addressed by the public using different language. We find extensive evidence of gender biased political communication consistent with gender stereotypes. Male politicians are disproportionately more likely to use words related to politics, ideology, and infrastructure, while female politicians use more emotional language and words related to gender and social affairs. We also find evidence of gendered communication from citizens to politicians. Male politicians are addressed with stronger insults, while words disproportionately addressed at female politicians include mentions to their physical aspect (pretty, cute) and infantilizing words. Our evidence suggests that politicians far from being role models of gender equality help reproduce gender inequality by communicating in stereotypical ways and also that citizens treat female politicians unequally.
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)
"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 and Nikolas Schöll
This paper studies the economic and political consequences of digitalization at the workplace. We employ an innovative empirical strategy that combines individual-level panel data from the United Kingdom with time-varying indicators of digitalization at the industry level to shed light on this question. We first assess the distributional consequences of technological change and find that technology is economically beneficial for a majority of the workforce in the 1997-2015 period. Wages increase for all but the less qualified workers and adverse employment effects are very limited. We then demonstrate that exposure to digitalization increased voter turnout and support for the Conservatives among highly educated workers, especially after 2010. An instrumental variable analysis, placebo tests using non-ICT capital stocks and multiple robustness checks add confidence to a causal interpretation of the results. Our findings indicate that the political consequences of technological change are more multi-faceted than the dominant narrative of the "revenge of the left-behind" suggests.
Draft available on request
Gendered language in Political Communication: A Machine Learning Approach
With Javier Beltrán and Alba Huidobro
Do male and female politicians communicate with the public in different ways? And does the public address politicians differently depending on their gender? This paper analyses gender biases in political communication between elected politicians and citizens using a large corpus of text. We collected over 800.000 tweets written by or addressed to members of the Spanish national and regional Parliaments between December 2017 and June 2018. We apply Lasso logistic regression models to examine if politicians from different genders speak and are addressed by the public using different language. We find extensive evidence of gender biased political communication consistent with gender stereotypes. Male politicians are disproportionately more likely to use words related to politics, ideology, and infrastructure, while female politicians use more emotional language and words related to gender and social affairs. We also find evidence of gendered communication from citizens to politicians. Male politicians are addressed with stronger insults, while words disproportionately addressed at female politicians include mentions to their physical aspect (pretty, cute) and infantilizing words. Our evidence suggests that politicians far from being role models of gender equality help reproduce gender inequality by communicating in stereotypical ways and also that citizens treat female politicians unequally.
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)
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