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.
From this paper by Chang-Tai Hsieh, Edward Miguel, Daniel Ortega, and Francisco R. Rodriguez. Over at Marginal Revolution (insert hat tip), Alex Tabarrok elaborates:
Between 2002 and 2004 millions of Venezuelans signed petitions calling for a vote to remove Hugo Chavez from office. Signatories were not anonymous and during the petition campaign Chavez supporters hinted darkly that there would be retaliation. Chavez was in fact forced into a recall election, but unfortunately he won (not one of democracies better moments). After the election, the list of signatories was distributed to government agencies in an easy-to-use database. The database included the names and addresses of all registered voters and whether they had signed an anti-Chavez petition. Technology thus provided Chavez supporters the information they needed to retaliate.
Fascinating (and troubling) stuff. Tabarrok notes that Ortega has, at least for the moment, an academic position in Venezuela.
UPDATE: Here is an ungated copy of the paper.
{ 4 comments }
I have friends who worked at Chavez government during the last years. And, as far as I know, there were none of retaliation on these people.
I am trying to get more information on this stuff.
I will read the paper and bring more information. However, I would be more sckeptcal on this subject, since there is a lot of role for ideology and wishfull thinking.
Last, but not least, to cite a text which says that Chavez victory was “not one of democracies better moments”…
Don’t you think you should criticese this?
Manoel: I assume that if someone works for the Chavez government, then he or she probably didn’t sign the petition and wouldn’t be subject to retaliation. Nevertheless, I welcome any information you can provide. I haven’t read the paper either, but I do wonder exactly what you mean by “ideology” and “wishful thinking.”
Finally, I was just interested in reporting on the paper, not in criticizing Tabarrok’s view of democracy. That simply wasn’t the subject of my post. You’re welcome to offer your own criticism.
Another comments:
1. Chavez governmet knew that a lot of people who supposed signed the petition, actually, didn’t do it.
If they could use this iformation (the electoral council had this information and were formed by majority pro-Chavez, according to the paper) why they didn’t use it?
2. If so many people suffered from political punishment, why we didn’t see this in the following elections? Isn’t it weird?
3. It is known that in Venezuela public sector (especial in PDVSA) many (high staff) people refused to change the way they worked, despite chiefs orders. So, for refusing to obey their chefs, they were fired or realocatted. It is not a surprise that these people experience a fall in their earnings.
Besides, It is reallistic to suppose that only four months after the recall the Government was able to produce so large scale political punishment?
Wouldn’t be reasonable to see a increasing in the falling of earnings over time?
Last, but not least, I expect they make available their data for reproducible purpose, in such a controversy issue (at least outside of US).
Signers were self- selected and likely belonged to groups or worked in economic sectors not expected to florish under a continuation of a Chavez government. Does the paper control for this? I don’t know as the link is gated.
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