Essays on political economy

Abstract

This thesis consists of three essays on economics focusing on the determinants of regime change and economic growth. I put the focus primarily on political, institutional, and historical factors. I started working on these topics after studying the importance of regime change and institutions in the modern economics literature. The first essay analyzes how media can be a powerful tool to promote regime change in tightly controlled political systems. I analyze the impact of Radio Liberty, an American radio with an anti-communist slant, on the 1991 Russian elections, which were the first elections in the country, to study the role of Western media on the demise of the Soviet Union. I use a novel empirical strategy exploiting ionospheric variation with the aim of obtaining a measure of Radio Liberty availability in each Russian electoral district. The results show a significant effect of these broadcasts in favor of Yeltsin, documenting that media can play an important role in political processes of regime change. In the second essay, I analyze the persistent effects of the territorial division in Spain between the Christian kingdoms in the north and Islamic Iberia in the center and south of the country during the Middle Ages. I analyze this question empirically using a spatial donut discontinuity design which compares Christian and Muslim territories exploiting the dynamics of the reconquest process undertaken by the Christians which resulted in the Muslim defeat. I find important differences in current municipal economic development with substantial positive effects in Christian municipalities. The third essay analyzes the importance of protests for regime change. I provide empirical evidence that protests have a significant and non-linear impact on the likelihood that a country successfully democratizes. I show that it is for intermediate values of protests that the likelihood of democratization is higher. I present a dynamic model to explain the empirical evidence. The main implication is that protests could play an important role for regime change as long as they are not too high because in the latter case there will be a backlash which will block regime change.