Research Interests
Comparative Politics; Political Economy; Distributive Politics; Political and Economic Development; Political Game Theory and Social Choice; International Development; Latin American Politics.
Working Papers
A Wealthy Median Voter?
[April 2007]
Abstract: The persistence of public spending in favor of the economic elite is at odds with predictions based on the median voter theorem (MVT) and in particular with predictions based on traditional theories of redistributive taxation under democratic regimes. If the poor can vote and hold accountable politicians, why we do not observe large redistribution of resources to the poor in the form of health care and education, which are considered a fundamental tenet of development strategies? The purpose of this study is to disentangle what is the political mechanism in place that explains the redistribution of resources for the public provision of health care and education in Developing Countries.
The main argument is that the wealthy population -and not the relatively poor as is suggested by the MVT- is located at the median of the distribution of preferences over redistributive taxation. In this sense, the wealthy population and their representatives are Condorcet winners in the collective decision making process of how to redistribute public resources for health care and education. The argument and its empirical implications are tested through statistical analysis on the public provision of education and health care in Latin America.
Political Feasibility of Poverty Alleviation Programs
[March 2005]
Abstract: This paper presents a theoretical model of redistributive taxation in democratic regimes where voters decide the size of the budget and its allocation between two policies: (i) universal social assistance programs (e.g. health care, education, and housing); and (ii) targeted poverty alleviation programs, where individuals below a threshold level of income (poverty line) receive a transfer in cash. In addition, urban and rural poverty are distinguished to take into account differences in infrastructure between both areas. Two political parties contend offering a policy platform that, accordingly to the perception of their candidates, maximizes their probability to win. As a result, targeted poverty alleviation programs tend to have little or no support by the majority and therefore political parties offer policy platforms that include only a small amount of these transfers. This finding holds true even when more than half of the population lays below the poverty line, because of the distinction between urban and rural poverty. Additionally, the model suggests that, subject to certain distributional assumptions akin to developing countries, the rural poor’s preferences have no influence over the policy platforms proposed by both candidates but are rather attractive to be convinced by using clientelistic methods.
Trade Flows among Federal States in Mexico: A Network Approach
[December 2003]
Abstract: The paper is presented in three sections. First, it develops a network structure of trade flow among Federal States in Mexico. Then it tests the significance of the block structure as a determinant on regional economic growth. Finally, some implications for policy making in regional economic development are extracted from the model. A network model is used to describe the trade among States in Mexico by using information on the volume of transportation of different goods as a proxy for the trade between all the States in 1999. It specifically identifies 7 blocks of states where the members of each block present similar patterns of trade. High per-capita income States (HS) are located at the core of the network and middle-income States (MS) are positioned at the periphery of this structure. Poor-income States (PS) are isolated of the network where they do not present a significant level of trade with States placed at other blocks or even with other States within the same block.
Machiavelli
on Distributive Politics
[2008]
Distributive Politics in the Roman Republic
[2008]
