Presidential Success and the World Economy

Abstract

Economic voting is a widely accepted regularity in the political science literature, yet most work on the subject either assumes that economic performance is a direct result of policymaking or, more recently, argues that voters can identify when this is not the case. Our paper challenges these claims by showing that, in a large subset of Latin American countries, both presidential popularity and prospects of reelection strongly depend on factors unambiguously exogenous to presidents' policy choices. These findings advance the literature on assignment of responsibility for economic performance, and pose important implications for democratic accountability.

Keywords: Economic Voting, Latin America, Elections

JEL Classification: P16