Institut de Política Econòmica i Governança

How do the Internet and social media affect political outcomes? We review empirical evidence from the recent political economy literature, focusing primarily on work that considers traits that distinguish the Internet and social media from traditional off-line media, such as low barriers to entry and reliance on user-generated content. We discuss the main results about the effects of the Internet in general, and social media in particular, on voting, street protests, attitudes toward government, political polarization, xenophobia, and politicians’ behavior. We also review evidence on the role of social media in the dissemination of fake news, and we summarize results about the strategies employed by autocratic regimes to censor the Internet and to use social media for surveillance and propaganda. We conclude by highlighting open questions about how the Internet and social media shape politics in democracies and autocracies.

Labour market policies are multi-dimensional: their design depends on factors such as generosity, coverage, the combination of active and passive elements, and overall cost. Political conflict on one dimension often hides agreement on others, and social groups possibly care about different aspects of policies. However, most empirical studies treat policy preferences as unidimensional. This article utilizes a novel experimental conjoint design to assess how five dimensions affect support for labour market policies in Spain. It also assesses if individuals’ self-interest and ideology affect the importance of each dimension for support for a policy. We find that individuals’ support depends mostly on the generosity of policies for the most destitute and on funding. We also find that ideology shapes which dimensions of policy citizens care most about, but economic self-interest does not. Importantly, our experimental design can be applied to study preferences for different social policies.

Using data from a field experiment in 500 villages, this paper studies how local institutions affect the quality of governance, as measured by aid distribution outcomes. In villages where elected councils exist and manage distributions, aid targeting improves. However, if the distribution is not clearly assigned to either the council or customary leaders, the creation of elected councils increases embezzlement and makes decision-making less inclusive. Requiring that women manage the distribution jointly with customary leaders also increases embezzlement. Thus, while elected councils can improve governance, overlapping mandates between new and existing institutions may result in increased rent-seeking.

We analyze how the formal recognition of foreign qualifications affects immigrants’ labor market outcomes. The empirical analysis is based on a novel German data set that links respondents’ survey information to their administrative records, allowing us to observe immigrants at monthly intervals before, during, and after their application for occupational recognition. We find that 3 years after obtaining recognition, immigrants earn 19.8% higher wages and are 24.5 percentage points more likely to be employed than immigrants in the control group. We further document that occupational recognition leads to full convergence of immigrants’ earnings to those of their native counterparts.

We study the causal effect of social media on ethnic hate crimes and xenophobic attitudes in Russia using quasi-exogenous variation in social media penetration across cities. Higher penetration of social media led to more ethnic hate crimes, but only in cities with a high pre-existing level of nationalist sentiment. Consistent with a mechanism of coordination of crimes, the effects are stronger for crimes with multiple perpetrators. We implement a national survey experiment and show that social media persuaded young and low-educated individuals to hold more xenophobic attitudes, but did not increase respondents' openness to expressing these views. Our results are consistent with a simple model of social learning where penetration of social networks increases individuals' propensity to meet like-minded people. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

We study the relationship between firms’ output quality and organizational structure. Using data on the production and transaction chain that makes up Peruvian fish meal manufacturing, we establish three results. First, firms integrate suppliers when the quality premium rises for exogenous reasons. Second, suppliers change their behavior to better maintain input quality when vertically integrated. Third, firms produce a higher share of high-quality output when weather and supplier availability shocks shift them into using integrated suppliers. Overall, our results indicate that quality upgrading is an important motive for integrating suppliers facing a quantity-quality trade-off, as classical theories of the firm predict.

Corruption cases have limited electoral consequences in many countries. Why do voters often fail to punish corrupt politicians at the polls? Previous research has focused on the role of lack of information, weak institutions and partisanship in explaining this phenomenon. In this paper, we propose three micro-mechanisms that can help understand why voters support corrupt mayors even in contexts with high information and strong institutions: implicit exchange (good performance can make up for corruption), credibility of information (accusations from opposition parties are not credible) and the lack of credible alternatives (the belief that all politicians are corrupt). We test these mechanisms using three survey experiments conducted in Catalonia. Our results suggest that implicit exchange and credibility of information help explain voters’ support for corrupt politicians.

Abstract How does the language of male and female politicians differ when they communicate directly with the public on social media? Do citizens address them differently? We apply Lasso logistic regression models to identify the linguistic features that most differentiate the language used by or addressed to male and female Spanish politicians. Male politicians use more words related to politics, sports, ideology and infrastructure, while female politicians talk about gender and social affairs. The choice of emojis varies greatly across genders. In a novel analysis of tweets written by citizens, we find evidence of gender‐specific insults, and note that mentions of physical appearance and infantilising words are disproportionately found in text addressed to female politicians. The results suggest that politicians conform to gender stereotypes online and reveal ways in which citizens treat politicians differently depending on their gender.

We survey the empirical literature in economics on the impact of media technologies on social capital. Guided by a simple model of information and collective action, we cover a range of different outcomes related to social capital—from social and political participation to interpersonal trust—in its benign and destructive manifestations. The impact of media technologies hinges on their content (information versus entertainment), their effectiveness in fostering coordination, and the networks they create as well as on individual characteristics and media consumption choices.

How does the reception of remittances change the views of those left behind? In this paper, we compare the impact of financial remittances (transmission of money) with the impact of social remittances (transmission of ideas and values) on preferences about the role of the state in the economy (in particular, the role of the state in creating jobs, reducing inequality, and securing citizens’ well-being). Using data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (2008–2010), we find that social learning via cross-border communication is positively associated with preference for an enhanced role of the state.

In societies with widespread gender
\n discrimination, development programs that encourage female
\n participation in local governance can potentially redress
\n gender imbalances in economic, political, and social
\n outcomes. Using a randomized field experiment encompassing
\n 500 Afghan villages, this study finds that a development
\n program which incorporates mandated female participation
\n increases female mobility and involvement in income
\n generation, but does not change female roles in family
\n decision-making or attitudes toward the general role of
\n women in society.

This article uses a subtle experimental treatment to examine how perceptions of income inequality affect generalized trust and the willingness to cooperate with others. It hypothesizes that inequality reduces prosocial attitudes mostly among low-income citizens, who are very sensitive to changes in their relative status. The results of the survey experiment conducted in the Netherlands suggest that perceiving the income distribution as more unequal has particularly detrimental effects on the prosocial attitudes of the poor. A disproportionate erosion of trust among the poor due to increases in income inequality may be an important mechanism hindering mobilization in favor of redistribution.

Honesty is one of the most valued traits in politicians. Yet, because lies often remain undiscovered, it is difficult to study if some politicians are more honest than others. This paper examines which individual characteristics are correlated with truth-telling in a controlled setting in a large sample of politicians. We designed and embedded a game that incentivizes lying with a nonmonetary method in a survey answered by 816 Spanish mayors. Mayors were first asked how interested they were in obtaining a detailed report about the survey results, and at the end of the survey, they had to flip a coin to find out whether they would be sent the report. Because the probability of heads is known, we can estimate the proportion of mayors who lied to obtain the report. We find that a large and statistically significant proportion of mayors lied. Mayors that are members of the two major political parties lied significantly more. We further find that women and men were equally likely to lie. Finally, we find a negative relationship between truth-telling and reelection in the next municipal elections, which suggests that dishonesty might help politicians survive in office.

Venezuela is currently experiencing the biggest crisis in its recent history. This has led more than 7.3 million Venezuelans to emigrate, at least 1.5 million of those to Peru, which amounted to an increase of over 4 percent in the Peruvian population. Venezuelan immigrants in Peru are relatively similar in cultural terms, but, on average, more skilled than Peruvians. In this paper, we first examine Venezuelans’ perceptions of being discriminated against in Peru. Using an instrumental variable strategy, we document a causal relationship between the level of employment in the informal sector – where most immigrants are employed – and reports of discrimination. We then study the impact of Venezuelan migration on local’s labor market outcomes, reported crime rates, and attitudes using a variety of data sources. We find that inflows of Venezuelans to particular locations led to increased employment and income among locals, decreased reported crime, and improved reported community quality. We conduct a heterogeneity analysis to identify the mechanisms behind these labor market effects and discuss the implications for Peruvian immigration policy.

The location of primary public schools in urban areas of developing countries is the focus of this study. In such areas, new schools and modification of the current schools are required, and this process should be developed using rational and broad supporting tools for decision makers, such as optimization models. We propose a realistic coverage location model and a framework to analyze the location of schools. Our approach considers the existing schools and their resizing, the best locations of the new schools that may have different capacities, population coverage, walking distances and budget provisions for building and updating schools. As a case study, we assess the current primary school network in Ciudad Benito Juarez to provide managerial insights. Through the proposed framework, we analyze the current locations of schools and decisions to be made by considering future scenarios in different time periods. The proposed model is quite flexible and easy to adapt to new considerations, allowing it to be applied to regions in developing countries under similar conditions.

Using data from a field experiment in
\n 500 villages, this paper studies how local institutions
\n affect the quality of governance, as measured by aid
\n distribution outcomes. In villages where elected councils
\n exist and manage distributions, aid targeting improves.
\n However, if the distribution is not clearly assigned to
\n either the council or customary leaders, the creation of
\n elected councils increases embezzlement and makes
\n decision-making less inclusive. Requiring that women manage
\n the distribution jointly with customary leaders also
\n increases embezzlement. Thus, while elected councils can
\n improve governance, overlapping mandates between new and
\n existing institutions may result in increased rent-seeking.

Does new media promote accountability in nondemocratic countries, where offline media is often suppressed? We show that blog posts, which exposed corruption in Russian state-controlled companies, had a negative causal impact on their market returns. For identification, we exploit the precise timing of blog posts by looking at within-day results with company-day fixed effects. Furthermore, we show that the posts are ultimately associated with higher management turnover and less minority shareholder conflicts. Taken together, our results suggest that social media can discipline corruption even in a country with limited political competition and heavily censored traditional media. (JEL G14, G34, L82, P23, P26, P34, Z13)

Do new communication technologies, such as social media, alleviate the collective action problem? This paper provides evidence that penetration of VK, the dominant Russian online social network, led to more protest activity during a wave of protests in Russia in 2011. As a source of exogenous variation in network penetration, we use the information on the city of origin of the students who studied with the founder of VK, controlling for the city of origin of the students who studied at the same university several years earlier or later. We find that a 10% increase in VK penetration increased the probability of a protest by 4.6% and the number of protesters by 19%. Additional results suggest that social media induced protest activity by reducing the costs of coordination rather than by spreading information critical of the government. We observe that VK penetration increased pro‐governmental support, with no evidence of increased polarization. We also find that cities with higher fractionalization of network users between VK and Facebook experienced fewer protests, and the effect of VK on protests exhibits threshold behavior.

Abstract Women are underrepresented in the top ranks of the scientific career, including the biomedical disciplines. This is not generally the result of explicit and easily recognizable gender biases but the outcome of decisions with many components of unconscious nature that are difficult to assess. Evidence suggests that implicit gender stereotypes influence perceptions as well as decisions. To explore these potential reasons of women’s underrepresentation in life sciences we analyzed the outcome of gender-science and gender-career Implicit Association Tests (IAT) taken by 2,589 scientists working in high profile biomedical research centers. We found that male-science association is less pronounced among researchers than in the general population (34% below the level of the general population). However, this difference is mostly explained by the low level of the IAT score among female researchers. Despite the highly meritocratic view of the academic career, male scientists have a high level of male-science association (261% the level among women scientists), similar to the general population.

Can bombs and broadcasts instigate resistance against a foreign regime? In this paper, we examine the canonical case of bombing designed to undermine enemy morale - the Allied bomber offensive against Germany during World War II. Our evidence shows that air power and the airwaves indeed undermined regime support. We collect data on treason trials and combine it with information on the bombing of over 900 German towns and cities. Using plausibly exogenous variation in weather, we show that places that suffered more bombardment saw noticeably more opposition. Bombing also reduced the combat motivation of soldiers: fighter pilots from bombed-out cities performed markedly less well after raids. We also provide evidence that exposure to BBC radio, especially together with bombing, increased the number of resistance cases. We corroborate these findings with the evidence on people’s opinions and behavior using unique survey data collected in 1945.