IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/intfor/v29y2013i4p575-591.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Forecasting leadership transitions around the world

Author

Listed:
  • Cáceres, Neila
  • Malone, Samuel W.

Abstract

We use popular non-parametric (CART, TreeNet) and parametric (logit) techniques to identify robust economic, demographic and political conditions that lead to shifts in control in the executive branch of government in 162 countries during the period 1960–2004. We find that institutional aspects of the political system, executive characteristics, demographic variables, economic growth, and economic trade variables are all very important for predicting leadership turnover in the following year. Financial crises are not robustly useful for this purpose, but a vulnerability to currency crises in times of low economic growth implies very high conditional probabilities of job losses for democratic leaders in non-election years. In-sample, TreeNet predicts 78% of leadership transition events correctly, compared to CART’s 70%, and TreeNet also generally achieves higher overall prediction accuracies than either CART or the logit model out-of-sample.

Suggested Citation

  • Cáceres, Neila & Malone, Samuel W., 2013. "Forecasting leadership transitions around the world," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 575-591.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:intfor:v:29:y:2013:i:4:p:575-591
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijforecast.2013.01.011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169207013000411
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2013.01.011?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Campbell, James E., 2008. "Evaluating U.S. presidential election forecasts and forecasting equations," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 259-271.
    2. Eduardo Borensztein & Ugo Panizza, 2009. "The Costs of Sovereign Default," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 56(4), pages 683-741, November.
    3. Adi Brender & Allan Drazen, 2008. "How Do Budget Deficits and Economic Growth Affect Reelection Prospects? Evidence from a Large Panel of Countries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 2203-2220, December.
    4. VJeffrey A. Frankel, 2005. "Mundell-Fleming Lecture: Contractionary Currency Crashes in Developing Countries," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 52(2), pages 149-192, September.
    5. Djankov, Simeon & McLiesh, Caralee & Shleifer, Andrei, 2007. "Private credit in 129 countries," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 299-329, May.
    6. Fair, Ray C, 1978. "The Effect of Economic Events on Votes for President," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 60(2), pages 159-173, May.
    7. Carmen M. Reinhart & Graciela L. Kaminsky, 1999. "The Twin Crises: The Causes of Banking and Balance-of-Payments Problems," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(3), pages 473-500, June.
    8. Andrew Leigh, 2009. "Does the World Economy Swing National Elections?," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 71(2), pages 163-181, April.
    9. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2014. "This Time is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of Financial Crises," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 15(2), pages 215-268, November.
    10. Andrew Berg & Eduardo Borensztein & Catherine Pattillo, 2005. "Assessing Early Warning Systems: How Have They Worked in Practice?," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 52(3), pages 1-5.
    11. Carmen M. Reinhart & Graciela L. Kaminsky, 1999. "The Twin Crises: The Causes of Banking and Balance-of-Payments Problems," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(3), pages 473-500, June.
    12. Deaton, Angus & Miller, Ron, 1996. "International Commodity Prices, Macroeconomic Performance and Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE), vol. 5(3), pages 99-191, October.
    13. Manasse, Paolo & Roubini, Nouriel, 2009. ""Rules of thumb" for sovereign debt crises," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 192-205, July.
    14. Paul J. Burke & Andrew Leigh, 2010. "Do Output Contractions Trigger Democratic Change?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 124-157, October.
    15. Samuel W. Malone, 2011. "Sovereign indebtedness, default, and gambling for redemption," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 63(2), pages 331-354, April.
    16. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2009. "Varieties of Crises and Their Dates," Introductory Chapters, in: This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, Princeton University Press.
    17. Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1998. "Law and Finance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(6), pages 1113-1155, December.
    18. Wolfers, Justin, 2002. "Are Voters Rational? Evidence from Gubernatorial Elections," Research Papers 1730, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    19. Burke Paul J., 2012. "Economic Growth and Political Survival," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-43, March.
    20. Hadhek Zouhaier & Mohamed Karim KEFI, 2012. "Institutions and Economic Growth," Asian Economic and Financial Review, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 2(7), pages 795-812, November.
    21. Mr. Axel Schimmelpfennig & Nouriel Roubini & Paolo Manasse, 2003. "Predicting Sovereign Debt Crises," IMF Working Papers 2003/221, International Monetary Fund.
    22. Roberto Chang, 2010. "Elections, Capital Flows, and Politico-economic Equilibria," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1759-1777, September.
    23. Carmen M. Reinhart, 2010. "This Time is Different Chartbook: Country Histories on Debt, Default, and Financial Crises," NBER Working Papers 15815, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    24. Nikolay Marinov, 2005. "Do Economic Sanctions Destabilize Country Leaders?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(3), pages 564-576, July.
    25. Bruce Bueno De Mesquita & Alastair Smith, 2010. "Leader Survival, Revolutions, and the Nature of Government Finance," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(4), pages 936-950, October.
    26. Ioannidis, Christos & Pasiouras, Fotios & Zopounidis, Constantin, 2010. "Assessing bank soundness with classification techniques," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 345-357, October.
    27. Jeffrey Frankel, 2005. "Contractionary Currency Crashes In Developing Countries," CID Working Papers 117, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    28. Friedman, Jerome H., 2002. "Stochastic gradient boosting," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 367-378, February.
    29. Przeworski,Adam & Alvarez,Michael E. & Cheibub,Jose Antonio & Limongi,Fernando, 2000. "Democracy and Development," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521793797.
    30. Carmignani, Fabrizio, 2002. "New Evidence on the Politics and Economics of Multiparty Cabinets Duration," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 49(3), pages 249-279, August.
    31. Alesina, Alberto & Özler, Sule & Roubini, Nouriel & Swagel, Phillip, 1996. "Political Instability and Economic Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 189-211, June.
    32. Fabrizio Carmignani, 2002. "New Evidence on the Politics and Economics of Multiparty Cabinets Duration," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 49(3), pages 249-279, August.
    33. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2008. "Climate Change and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century," NBER Working Papers 14132, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    34. Mohamed Karim KEFI & Hadhek Zouhaier, 2012. "Inequality and Economic Growth," Asian Economic and Financial Review, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 2(8), pages 1013-1025, December.
    35. Gasiorowski, Mark J., 1995. "Economic Crisis and Political Regime Change: An Event History Analysis," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 89(4), pages 882-897, December.
    36. Przeworski,Adam & Alvarez,Michael E. & Cheibub,Jose Antonio & Limongi,Fernando, 2000. "Democracy and Development," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521790321.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cáceres, Neila & Malone, Samuel W., 2015. "Optimal Weather Conditions, Economic Growth, and Political Transitions," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 16-30.
    2. Döpke, Jörg & Fritsche, Ulrich & Pierdzioch, Christian, 2017. "Predicting recessions with boosted regression trees," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 745-759.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Burke Paul J., 2012. "Economic Growth and Political Survival," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-43, March.
    2. Cáceres, Neila & Malone, Samuel W., 2015. "Optimal Weather Conditions, Economic Growth, and Political Transitions," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 16-30.
    3. Suthan Krishnarajan, 2019. "Crisis? What crisis? Measuring economic crisis in political science," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 53(3), pages 1479-1493, May.
    4. Rho, Caterina & Saenz, Manrique, 2021. "Financial stress and the probability of sovereign default," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    5. Casu, Barbara & Clare, Andrew & Saleh, Nashwa, 2011. "Towards a new model for early warning signals for systemic financial fragility and near crises: an application to OECD countries," MPRA Paper 37043, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Karatas, B., 2014. "Financial crisis and monetary policy," Other publications TiSEM 41e463f0-e122-4379-8db5-6, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    7. Eijffinger, Sylvester C.W. & Karataş, Bilge, 2023. "Three sisters: The interlinkage between sovereign debt, currency, and banking crises," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    8. Eduardo Borensztein & Ugo Panizza, 2009. "The Costs of Sovereign Default," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 56(4), pages 683-741, November.
    9. Martin Bruns & Tigran Poghosyan, 2018. "Leading indicators of fiscal distress: evidence from extreme bounds analysis," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(13), pages 1454-1478, March.
    10. Catão, Luis A.V. & Milesi-Ferretti, Gian Maria, 2014. "External liabilities and crises," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 18-32.
    11. Mansour-Ichrakieh, Layal, 2020. "The impact of Israeli Geopolitical Risks on the Lebanese Financial Market: A Destabilizer Multiplier," MPRA Paper 99376, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Rakesh Padhan & K. P. Prabheesh, 2019. "Effectiveness Of Early Warning Models: A Critical Review And New Agenda For Future Direction," Bulletin of Monetary Economics and Banking, Bank Indonesia, vol. 22(4), pages 457-484.
    13. Ugo Panizza & Federico Sturzenegger & Jeromin Zettelmeyer, 2009. "The Economics and Law of Sovereign Debt and Default," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(3), pages 651-698, September.
    14. Daniela Bragoli & Piero Ganugi & Giancarlo Ianulardo, 2013. "Gini’s transvariation analysis: an application on financial crises in developing countries," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 40(1), pages 153-174, February.
    15. Markus Holopainen & Peter Sarlin, 2015. "Toward robust early-warning models: A horse race, ensembles and model uncertainty," Papers 1501.04682, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2016.
    16. Ha, Eunyoung & Kang, Myung-koo, 2015. "Government Policy Responses to Financial Crises: Identifying Patterns and Policy Origins in Developing Countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 264-281.
    17. Thanh C. Nguyen & Vítor Castro & Justine Wood, 2022. "Political environment and financial crises," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 417-438, January.
    18. Stijn Claessens & M. Ayhan Kose, 2013. "Financial Crises: Explanations, Types and Implications," CAMA Working Papers 2013-06, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    19. Carmen M. Reinhart, 2022. "From Health Crisis to Financial Distress," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 70(1), pages 4-31, March.
    20. Carmen M. Reinhart & Takeshi Tashiro, 2013. "Crowding out redefined: the role of reserve accumulation," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Nov, pages 1-43.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:intfor:v:29:y:2013:i:4:p:575-591. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ijforecast .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.