Andrea Tesei

Job market candidate

Contact information

C. Ramon Trias Fargas, 25-27
Barcelona
Tel. +34 93 542 2696
andrea.tesei@upf.edu

Research interests

Applied Econometrics, Economic Development, Political Economy

Placement officer

Joachim Voth
jvoth@crei.cat

References

Research

“Racial Fragmentation, Income Inequality and Social Capital Formation: New Evidence from the US” (Job Market Paper)
Existing studies of social capital formation in US metropolitan areas have found that social capital is lower when there is more income inequality and greater racial fragmentation. I add to this literature by examining the role of income inequality between racial groups (racial income inequality). I find that greater racial inequality reduces social capital. Also, racial fragmentation is no longer a significant determinant of social capital once racial income inequality is accounted for. This result is consistent with a simple conceptual framework where concurrent differences in race and income are especially detrimental for social capital formation. I find empirical support for further implications deriving from this assumption. In particular, I show that racial income inequality has a more detrimental effect in more racially fragmented communities and that trust falls more in minority groups than the majority group when racial income inequality increases.

“Resource Windfalls, Political Regimes, and Political Stability” (Joint with Francesco Caselli) Submitted
We study theoretically and empirically whether natural resource windfalls affect political regimes. We document the following regularities. Natural resource windfalls have no effect on the political system when they occur in democracies. However, windfalls have significant political consequences in autocracies. In particular, when an autocratic country receives a positive shock to its flow of resource rents it responds by becoming even more autocratic. Furthermore, there is heterogeneity in the response of autocracies. In deeply entrenched autocracies the effect of windfalls on politics is virtually nil, while in moderately entrenched autocracies windfalls significantly exacerbate the autocratic nature of the political system. To frame the empirical work we present a simple model in which political incumbents choose the degree of political contestability by deciding how much to spend on vote-buying, bullying, or outright repression. Potential challengers decide whether or not to try to unseat the incumbent and replace him. The model uncovers a reason for the asymmetric impact of resource windfalls on democracies and autocracies, as well as the differential impact within autocratic regimes

“Oil Price Shocks, Income and Democracy” (Joint with Markus Bruckner and Antonio Ciccone) Forthcoming in Review of Economics and Statistics
We examine the effect of international oil price fluctuations on democratic institutions over the 1960- 2007 period. We also exploit the very persistent response of aggregate income to oil price fluctuations to study the effect of persistent (oil price-driven) income shocks on democracy. Our results indicate that countries with greater net oil exports over GDP see improvements in democratic institutions following upturns in international oil prices. We estimate that a 1 percentage point increase in per capita GDP growth due to a positive oil price shock increases the Polity democracy score by around 0.2 percentage points on impact and by around 2 percentage points in the long run. The effect on the probability of a democratic transition is around 0.4 percentage points.