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The Price of Political Opposition: Evidence from Venezuela's Maisanta

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  • Chang-Tai Hsieh
  • Edward Miguel
  • Daniel Ortega
  • Francisco Rodriguez

Abstract

In 2004, the Chávez regime in Venezuela distributed the list of several million voters whom had attempted to remove him from office throughout the government bureaucracy, allegedly to identify and punish these voters. We match the list of petition signers distributed by the government to household survey respondents to measure the economic effects of being identified as a Chavez political opponent. We find that voters who were identified as Chavez opponents experienced a 5 percent drop in earnings and a 1.5 percentage point drop in employment rates after the voter list was released. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the loss aggregate TFP from the misallocation of workers across jobs was substantial, on the order of 3 percent of GDP.

Suggested Citation

  • Chang-Tai Hsieh & Edward Miguel & Daniel Ortega & Francisco Rodriguez, 2009. "The Price of Political Opposition: Evidence from Venezuela's Maisanta," NBER Working Papers 14923, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14923
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • N16 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Latin America; Caribbean
    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development

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