Category Archives: Political economy

Colonial institutions matter, Brazilian style

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Rent Seeking and the Unveiling of ‘De Facto’ Institutions: Development and Colonial Heritage within Brazil
Joana Naritomi, Rodrigo R. Soares, Juliano J. Assunção
March 2007

Abstract
This paper analyzes the roots and implications of variations in de facto institutions, within a
constant de jure institutional setting. We explore the role of rent-seeking episodes in colonial
Brazil as determinants of the quality of current local institutions, and argue that this variation
reveals a de facto dimension of institutional quality. We show that municipalities with origins
tracing back to the sugar-cane colonial cycle – characterized by a polarized and oligarchic
socioeconomic structure – display today more inequality in the distribution of land.
Municipalities with origins tracing back to the gold colonial cycle – characterized by an overbureaucratic
and heavily intervening presence of the Portuguese state – display today worse
governance practices and less access to justice. Using variables created from the rent-seeking
colonial episodes as instruments to current institutions, we show that local governance and
access to justice are significantly related to long-term development across Brazilian
municipalities.

Trade policy

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Dani Rodrik and Tyler Cowen debate about trade policy desirability…
 
Should economists be debating politics?
 
Question for Dani Rodrik

 
The devil is in the details.  Here is Rodrik again:

“is there any chance that we could actually move in the direction that I would like to see (which is not necessarily and always the unconditional free trade direction) without doing more damage than good?

The fact that we do not live in autarky is prima facie evidence that we are not at a corner solution where the political-economy equilibrium is concerned. That means that even relatively small changes in institutional design—with corresponding changes in incentives for political agents—can have important implications for the outputs of the political game. We actually have some control over how the political game is to be played, and therefore over the amount of rent-seeking that will be generated in equilibrium.

Here is one example where this generally works to our advantage. To prevent congressional log-rolling in tariff setting, we allow Congress to delegate the details of trade policy negotiations to the President (in the form of trade negotiating authority), with Congress limited to an up-or-down vote on the entire package. It is generally agreed that this delivers better trade policy than in the absence of delegation.

And here is another example where it works to our disadvantage (and does so again by design). Anti-dumping proceedings are explicitly designed to favor import-competing firms and to provide protection where none is really needed on sound economic grounds. That is because the government is instructed to determine whether firms are “injured,” but not whether the imposition of duties would engender greater hurt elsewhere. Their outcomes would be significantly different if we allowed beneficiaries of trade (consumers and downstream firms) to have standing in these proceedings.”

Finally, Rodrik gives me a nice quote of the day:

“Scratch any strongly-held view about free trade, and you will find (typically) unexamined political assumptions underneath.”

 

Robert Fogel, nobel activist

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This is an excerpt from an interview with 1993 nobel laureate Robert Fogel:
 

RF: There’s a large gap in your academic CV from 1948, when you finished your undergraduate degree, to the mid-1950s, when you enrolled in graduate school. What were you doing during that period?

 

Fogel: When I graduated from college, I had two job offers. One was from my father, to join him in the meat-packing business. That would have been quite lucrative. The other was as an activist for a left-wing youth organization. I chose the latter and worked as an activist from 1948 to 1956. At the time I was making that decision, my father told me: “If you really believe in that cause, come work with me. You will make a much higher wage and you could give your extra income to hire several people instead of just yourself.” I thought, well, that makes some sense. But I was convinced that this was a way to get me to change my views or at least lessen my commitment to an ideological cause that I found very important. Yes, the first year, I might give all of my extra money to the movement, but every year I would probably give less, and finally reach the point when I was giving nothing at all. I feared I would be co-opted. I thought this was my father’s way of indoctrinating me.

 

So I went to work as an activist. At first, I thought what I was doing was important. But over time, I started to become disillusioned. The Marxists had predicted a depression in 1947-1948. That didn’t happen, so they said, it will happen the next year. But it never came. So by the early 1950s, I began seriously reconsidering my position. I had been drawn to Marxism because I thought of it as a science. But it was pretty clear that its “scientific” predictions were wildly off the mark. I was ready to leave the movement, but then McCarthyism started to heat up and that led me to hesitate. I stayed a few more years to fight against McCarthyism. But by 1955 and 1956, the horrors that had occurred under Stalin, which we had all heard about but didn’t really believe, were confirmed by Khrushchev. That was the breaking point in a sense. I began to rethink my views and especially my involvement with Marxism. So I decided that I needed to receive more serious training in economics and the social sciences generally and went to Columbia.

 

RF: Did the failures of Marxism to accurately analyze the economic situation in the United States influence you to pursue work that was heavily data driven and empirical?

 

Fogel: There is no doubt about that. As I said, Marxism was sold as a science, but it became clear that it was not. It was more of an ideology than anything else. My early experiences made me very skeptical of ideologues of any persuasion. I’m willing to be surprised, to accept seemingly radical ideas, but there better be data to back up those claims, and Marxism could not provide that type of evidence.

Coasian bargains and structural reforms

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The (im)possibility of political Coasian bargains?

The fact that second generation reforms have stalled since divided government came about in Mexico, poses the crucial question of why, if the net benefits of these reforms are so high, political key players cannot successfully bargain to implement them? A related question is how come the PRI was able to push reform in so many areas, while current government faces gridlock? The puzzles of political Coasian bargains actually permeate policy-making everywhere and deserve some clarification here.

A simplified Coasian bargain looks like this: “If the long run net efficiency gains of policy A exceed transaction costs B, policy A should be implemented”.  Under ideal situations, when property rights are well defined, and as long as transaction costs are low enough, such bargains should be made.  If they are not made, we pose two possible explanations:

1. Property rights of reform are not well defined.  Reforms imply clear political costs to key players, as well as economic costs to specific groups.  Following Olson (2000), the beneficiaries of the status quo (reform) are concentrated (diffuse) whereas its burden is diffuse (concentrated).  If the economic and political payoffs are not easily transferable between transacting parties, bargains are more difficult: how do you translate future economic payoffs into present value political compensation?

2. Lack of credible commitment devices.  A hypothetical contract, where reforms are agreed upon in exchange for some political and economical compensation, requires credible commitments, and equally important, they need to be enforceable.  In private bargains, it is easy to rely on explicit contracts and third party enforcement.  But in matters of public policy, such explicit contracts are rare, and the likely enforcer, the electorate, faces collective action problems.

In the case of Mexico, the inability of legislators to be reelected in consecutive terms, for instance, limits the time horizons of the political bargains that can credibly be made.  In the PRI era, centralized policymaking allowed for some political bargains, but they also faced limits and trade offs, which often turned into unsustainable policies.  It is possible that as political competition consolidates, some commitment devices will develop in the current PMP arenas—but such devices are not here yet.

 

Testing Huntington… they will be assimilated

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Testing Huntington: Is Hispanic Immigration a Threat to American Identity?
Jack Citrin, Amy Lerman, Michael Murakami, and Kathryn Pearson

Abstract
Samuel Huntington argues that the sheer number, concentration, linguistic homogeneity, and other characteristic of Hispanic immigrants will erode the dominance of English as a nationally unifying language, weaken the country’s dominant cultural values, and promote ethnic allegiances over a primary identification as an American. Testing these hypotheses with data from the U.S. Census and national and Los Angeles opinion surveys, we show that Hispanics acquire English and lose Spanish rapidly beginning with the second generation, and appear to be no more or less religious or committed to the work ethic than native-born whites. Moreover, a clear majority of Hispanics reject a purely ethnic identification and patriotism grows from one generation to the next. At present, a traditional pattern of political assimilation appears to prevail.

http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/PerspectivesMar07Citrin_etal.pdf

The Improving State of the World

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• The rates at which hunger and malnutrition have been decreasing in India since 1950 and in China since 1961 are striking. By 2002 China’s food supply had gone up 80%, and India’s increased by 50%. Overall, these types of increases in the food supply have reduced chronic undernourishment in developing countries from 37% in 1970 to 17% in 2001, despite an overall 83% growth in their populations.
• Economic freedom has increased in 102 of the 113 countries for which data is available for both 1990 and 2000.
• Between 1970 and the early 2000s, the global illiteracy rated dropped from 46 to 18 percent.
• Between 1897-1902 and 2001-2003, the U.S. retail prices of flour, bacon and potatoes relative to per capita income, dropped by 92, 85, and 82 percent respectively. And, the real global price of food commodities has declined 75% since 1950.

And these tables and charts are much more telling:

The Changing Face of Economics

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This is David Colander in his intro to The Making of an Economist, Redux:

“(…) looking at the profession today, I am convinced that it is quite different than it was in the mid-1980s, when Arjo and I first sat over drinks and lamented the state of the profession. The commitment to theorems and proofs has declined, and there is a much stronger empirical branch of economics. Natural experiments and instrumental variables are now central to an economist’s training. Behavioral economics has advanced enormously, and the macro that is done is fundamentally different from the macro that was done in the 1980s; advanced time-series statistics, such as cointegrated structural VARs and calibration, are commonplace, where they were hardly known before. What were taken as requirements of research in the 1980s are no longer requirements in the 2000s; the holy trinity of greed, equilibrium, and rationality has been replaced by a looser trilogy of purposeful behavior, sustainability, and enlightened self-interest. I could extend the list enormously, but there is no need to do that here. My point is simply that economics has changed and will continue to change, making it impossible to call the existing profession neoclassical any longer.“

Acemoglu vs. Glaeser on WSJ

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Political economy economy heavy-weights Daron Acemoglu (MIT) and Ed Glaeser (Harvard) go at it on the issue of education, democracy and growth…  It’s a nice debate with lots of links to recent papers–very helpful for students, I think.
 
Is Democracy the Best Setting
For Strong Economic Growth?
March 13, 2007

Ed Glaeser writes: Rich countries are stable democracies. Poor countries tend to be political basket cases, careening between brutal dictatorships and unstable semi-republics. The relationship between democracy and wealth might suggest democracy naturally leads to prosperity. This view is comforting and also gives us another reason to enthusiastically try to export democracy globally.

While I yield to no one in my passion for liberty, the view that democracy is a critical ingredient for economic growth is untenable. There is no robust statistical relationship to back it up, and Robert Barro actually found2 democracy reduces growth, once he statistically controls for the rule of law.

It is, however, true that growth rates vary much more under dictatorships3 than under democracies. Anti-development autocrats, such as Mobutu Sese Seko4 or Kim Jong Il5, are about the worst thing for economic growth, other than civil war. But many of the best growth experiences have been in less-than-democratic regimes that invest in physical and human capital such as Lee Kwan Yew’s Singapore6 or post-Mao China. Some dictators are even better than democrats at restraining the growth-killing practice of expropriating private wealth. I think the relationship between democracy and wealth reflects the power of human capital — education — to make countries both rich and democratic. If you put enough smart people together, they’ll figure out how to govern themselves and gravitate towards democracy7.

* * *

Daron Acemoglu writes: I agree with Ed on many points. In the postwar era, it’s true that democracies haven’t grown faster than autocratic regimes. Plus, there are clear examples of fast growth under dictatorships; see South Korea under Gen. Park Chung Hee8. So, why haven’t democracies been more successful? I believe the answer lies in recognizing two things. First, there are different kinds of democracies. And second, it’s important to consider that economic growth and democracy have a very different relationship over the long term — that is for periods as long as 100 years — than over the short or medium term.

Many societies counted as “democratic” using standard measures are really “dysfunctional democracies” where traditional elites dominate politics through control of the party system, political influence, vote buying, intimidation and even assassination. Colombia, which has had regular democratic elections for the past 50 years, is a typical example9. In others, democratic institutions survive, but there is significant in-fighting between ethnic groups, religious groups or social classes. The situation in Iraq would be the most extreme — but not a unique — example. Finally, many democracies suffer economically from populist and irresponsible macroeconomic policies, which are often adopted after transitions from repressive dictatorships and during periods when politics are turbulent and conflicts over wealth distribution are strong.

On the second point, it’s true that autocratic regimes can generate growth for certain periods of time by providing secure property rights and good business conditions to firms aligned with political powers. But modern capitalist growth requires not only secure property rights, but also creative destruction, that is, the entry of new firms with new ideas and technologies that replace the successful firms of the past. Creative destruction requires a level playing field, which democracies are better at providing because they have more equal distributions of political power than autocracies or monarchies.

So, if we look beyond the past 60 years, we see that it was the U.S., with its democratic institutions, that created the environment for new businesses to enter, flourish and spur the industrial growth of the 19th century. There were many rich autocracies and repressive regimes in the 18th century, including places like Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica. But it was the U.S. that grew rapidly over the next two centuries while these autocratic regimes stagnated10.The relationship between human capital and democracy that Ed raises is fascinating. But I will return to that in a little in the context of the causes of democracy.

…read the whole thing here:

Handbook of Political Economy

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Hace sólo unos meses salió el Oxford Handbook of Political Economy (Oxford Handbooks of Political Science), editado por Barry R. Weingast y Donald Wittman.
 
Son 54 capitulos y más de 1000 paginas de gloriosos surveys del field.  ¿Cómo deglutirlo en 2 semanaas? Fácil: Pones a 26 estudiantes de Economía Política a leer 2 capitulos cada uno y publicar summaries en el blog del curso, con todo y referencias a los 5 seminal papers de cada tema:
 
 
Creo que es una forma amena de llevar el Handbook a las masas… así sea de manera imperfecta.

Prosperity paradox?

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Not quite, says Daniel Ben-Ami.  Today’s world looks, on average, like an utopian dream from a mere 100 years ago.
 
There is no ‘paradox of prosperity’
So what if material progress doesn’t always make us happy? It’s still a good thing, and here’s why.
Daniel Ben-Ami
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/printable/2678/
Contemporary critics of consumerism and popular prosperity are obsessed with what they see as a paradox. A central theme of their arguments is that economic growth does not make people happier. In their view, the pursuit of mass affluence is at best futile and is probably responsible for making humanity miserable. Often the growth sceptics argue that the pursuit of material goods is akin to a disease: they say the developed world is suffering from ‘affluenza’ or ‘luxury fever’ (1). Typically they conclude we should not attempt to become richer and often they argue for the pursuit of alternative social goals such as mental well-being.

But there is reason to question whether breaking the connection between prosperity and happiness is the killer blow that the critics assume. The growth sceptics seem to ignore the possibility that greater affluence could be immensely beneficial even if it does not necessarily make people happier. Nor do they understand that the propensity for human beings to be unhappy with their lot could have a good side. The striving for a better life is an important motor force of progress. The arguments the happiness pundits advance to show that prosperity does not lead to enhanced well-being are also dubious. And the policies they often propose to make people happier tend to be authoritarian.
(…)
Fortunately a new book by Indur Goklany, an American economist, examines the data in great detail. Its title clearly sums up the argument: The Improving State of the World: Why we’re Living Longer, Healthier More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet (Cato 2007). Goklany’s book takes a similar line to The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge 2001) by Bjørn Lomborg, a Danish statistician, which infuriated environmentalists when it was first published (7).

There is an immense amount of detail in Goklany’s book but some of the key statistics are worth reiterating:

  • Life expectancy, which for much of human history was 20-30 years, increased from a worldwide average of 31 in 1900 to 66.8 in 2003. For the high income countries it has reached 78.5 years.
  • Infant mortality (death of infants before the age of one per 1,000 live births) was typically over 200 before industrialisation. That is over a fifth of babies died before reaching their first birthday. The worldwide average has fallen from 156.9 in the early 1950s to 56.8 in 2003. In the developed world the average is 7.1.
  • Improving health. The onset of chronic diseases is typically happening several years later than in the past. For example, white males aged 60-64 in America are two-and-a-half times more likely to be free of chronic disease than their counterparts a century ago.
  • Air quality. Despite the common prejudice that economic development leads to air pollution the evidence in the developed world overwhelmingly suggests that air quality is improving. For example, the traditional pollutants have declined in America for several decades.

The fact that the trend is improving does not mean that everything is perfect. There are many instances, particularly in the developing world, where things could be far better. But to the extent there are still problems they constitute an argument for more development rather than less. If the developing world could reach the current living standards of the developed world, that would be a start. Billions of people would be much better off.

New books for a new year

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I spent the holidays in the U.S. so I had time to update my bookshelves with some volumes I wanted to get for a while…
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY
 
 
I will be using the Oxford Handbook as one of the main sources for my political economy class this spring term–taking the place of Mueller’s previous compilation: its several chapters provide an up to date survey on what has become a quite large literature.  Besley and Acemoglu/Robinson will only be suggested readings–these two volumes comprise something like the most current theoretical framework for political/institutional economics.
 
ECONOMETRICS
 
Microeconometrics: Methods and Applications By: A. Colin Cameron, Pravin K. Trivedi
 
Quoting from the authors’ website:
“Distinguishing features include emphasis on nonlinear models and robust inference, as well as chapter-length treatments of GMM estimation, nonparametric regression, simulation-based estimation, bootstrap methods, Bayesian methods, stratified and clustered samples, treatment evaluation, measurement error, and missing data.”
 
This volume has very nice supplement materials available on the web:
 
GENERAL INTEREST
 
Stumbling on Happiness By: Daniel Gilbert
 
ECONOMIC THOUGHT
 
 
 

Do Economists Agree on Anything? Yes

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This is from Mankiws’s blog:
 
Robert Whaples surveys PhD members of the American Economic Association and finds substantial agreement on a wide range of policy issues. For example:
  • 87.5 percent agree that “the U.S. should eliminate remaining tariffs and other barriers to trade.”
  • 85.2 percent agree that “the U.S. should eliminate agricultural subsidies.”
  • 85.3 percent agree that “the gap between Social Security funds and expenditures will become unsustainably large within the next fifty years if current policies remain unchanged.”
  • 77.2 percent agree that “the best way to deal with Social Security’s long-term funding gap is to increase the normal retirement age.”
  • 67.1 percent agree that “parents should be given educational vouchers which can be used at government-run or privately-run schools.”
  • 65.0 percent agree that “the U.S. should increase energy taxes.”

And, finally, the topic that generates the most consensus:

  • 90.1 percent disagree with the position that “the U.S. should restrict employers from outsourcing work to foreign countries.”

One issue that fails to generate consensus is the minimum wage: 37.7 percent want it increased, while 46.8 percent want it eliminated.

Econometrics: A Bird’s Eye View

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This is a survey on economtrics for the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and Law, 2nd ed. (forthcoming).
 
Econometrics: A Bird’s Eye View
by John F. Geweke, Joel L. Horowitz, Hashem Pesaran (November 2006)

Abstract:
As a unified discipline, econometrics is still relatively young and has been transforming and expanding very rapidly over the past few decades. Major advances have taken place in the analysis of cross sectional data by means of semi-parametric and non-parametric techniques. Heterogeneity of economic relations across individuals, firms and industries is increasingly acknowledged and attempts have been made to take them into account either by integrating out their effects or by modeling the sources of heterogeneity when suitable panel data exists. The counterfactual considerations that underlie policy analysis and treatment evaluation have been given a more satisfactory foundation. New time series econometric techniques have been developed and employed extensively in the areas of macroeconometrics and finance. Non-linear econometric techniques are used increasingly in the analysis of cross section and time series observations. Applications of Bayesian techniques to econometric problems have been given new impetus largely thanks to advances in computer power and computational techniques. The use of Bayesian techniques have in turn provided the investigators with a unifying framework where the tasks of forecasting, decision making, model evaluation and learning can be considered as parts of the same interactive and iterative process; thus paving the way for establishing the foundation of “real time econometrics”. This paper attempts to provide an overview of some of these developments. 
PDF: Discussion Paper No. 2458

 
 

The Impact Evaluation Gap

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Policy evaluation is the kind of stuff we rarely address properly in universities. If nothing else, this is an area were the dismal science can really shed light and prove to be useful.

When Will We Ever Learn? Improving Lives Through Impact Evaluation

Download (PDF, 536 KB) 05/31/2006

Each year billions of dollars are spent on thousands of programs to improve health, education and other social sector outcomes in the developing world. But very few programs benefit from studies that could determine whether or not they actually made a difference. This absence of evidence is an urgent problem: it not only wastes money but denies poor people crucial support to improve their lives.

This report by the Evaluation Gap Working Group provides a strategic solution to this problem addressing this gap, and systematically building evidence about what works in social development, proving it is possible to improve the effectiveness of domestic spending and development assistance by bringing vital knowledge into the service of policymaking and program design.

In 2004 the Center for Global Development, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, convened the Evaluation Gap Working Group. The group was asked to investigate why rigorous impact evaluations of social development programs, whether financed directly by developing country governments or supported by international aid, are relatively rare. The Working Group was charged with developing proposals to stimulate more and better impact evaluations. This report, the final report of the working group, contains specific recommendations for addressing this urgent problem.

Read more here: http://www.cgdev.org/

Casillas rurales vs. urbanas en el PREP

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La semana pasada estuve en un seminario sobre el PREP en el IFE.  En una de las mesas en las que participé surgió la pregunta: “¿Cómo sabemos si la demora de las casillas rurales en verdad tuvo un impacto significativo en el flujo de datos del PREP?”

 

En el análisis de estadística descriptiva que hice meses antes era obvio que las casillas urbanas llegaron antes, en promedio, que las rurales… y que este sesgo ayudaba a explicar la ventaja inicial (y decreciente) de Calderón sobre AMLO durante la duración del PREP. 

 

¿Cómo podemos verificar esto estadísticamente, más allá de las gráficas?  Comparemos el tiempo promedio de cada tipo de casillas en ingresar al PREP:

 

. by casilla: summ horasdec  (# horas que tardó cada casilla en ingresar al PREP)

———————————————————————-

-> casilla_rural = 0   (casillas urbanas)

    Variable |       Obs        Mean    Std. Dev.       Min        Max

————-+——————————————————–

    horasdec |     85221    5.115121    2.764698          0      24.87

-> casilla_rural = 1   (casillas rurales)

    horasdec |     32066    7.436029    3.501121          0       24.9

 

Como vemos las casillas urbanas llegaron 7.43 – 5.11 = 2.32 horas antes que las rurales.   La varianza de las casillas rurales es mayor, además. ¿Será una diferencia significativa? Podemos hacer un t-test de medias o bien una regresión: 

 

Dep Var: num. de horas que tarda casilla en aparecer en el PREP…

IndepVar: Dummy  casilla_rural/urbana  

 

. regress  horasdec casilla_rural  

      Source |       SS       df       MS              Number of obs =  117287

————-+——————————           F(  1,117285) =14093.54

       Model |  125504.017     1  125504.017           Prob > F      =  0.0000

    Residual |   1044431.6117285  8.90507397           R-squared     =  0.1073

————-+——————————           Adj R-squared =  0.1073

       Total |  1169935.62117286  9.97506622           Root MSE      =  2.9841

——————————————————————————

    horasdec |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf. Interval]

————-+—————————————————————-

casilla_ru~l |   2.320909   .0195501   118.72   0.000     2.282591    2.359226

       _cons |   5.115121   .0102222   500.39   0.000     5.095085    5.135156

——————————————————————————

 

 

Como se aprecia, las casillas rurales “nada más” están a 118 errores estándar de distancia de las urbanas…  Pero seamos más rigurosos: Veamos si la dummy rural sobrevive al controlar por 32 dummies estatales–a la mejor la heterogeneidad estatal elimina la dicotomía rural/urbano:

 

. areg horasdec casilla, abs(edo)

                                                       Number of obs =  117287

                                                       F(  1,117254) =12373.15

                                                       Prob > F      =  0.0000

                                                       R-squared     =  0.1945

                                                       Adj R-squared =  0.1942

                                                       Root MSE      =   2.835

 

——————————————————————————

    horasdec |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf. Interval]

————-+—————————————————————-

casilla_ru~l |   2.228325   .0200327   111.23   0.000     2.189061    2.267589

       _cons |   5.140433    .009926   517.88   0.000     5.120978    5.159888

————-+—————————————————————-

         edo |     F(31, 117254) =    409.380   0.000          (32 categories)

 

El coeficiente de diferencia entre casillas rurales y urbanas baja de 2.3 a 2.2 horas.   Pero si esto aún no nos convence, podemos controlar por 300 dummies distritales–quizá la heterogeneidad distrital elimina o absorbe la dicotomía rural/urbano:

 

. areg horasdec casilla, abs(edodist)

                                                       Number of obs =  117287

                                                       F(  1,116986) = 4269.59

                                                       Prob > F      =  0.0000

                                                       R-squared     =  0.3432

                                                       Adj R-squared =  0.3415

                                                       Root MSE      =  2.5629

——————————————————————————

    horasdec |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf. Interval]

————-+—————————————————————-

casilla_ru~l |   1.373901   .0210263    65.34   0.000      1.33269    1.415112

       _cons |    5.37403   .0094366   569.49   0.000     5.355535    5.392526

————-+—————————————————————-

     edodist |    F(299, 116986) =    140.532   0.000         (300 categories)

 

 

Como vemos, resulta que aún controlando por heterogeneidad distrital, el factor rural añade 1.37 horas de demora promedio frente a las casillas urbanas. Es decir, al interior de cada distrito, las casillas rurales demoraron 1.37 horas más en ser procesadas que las urbanas.  En los tres casos analizados arriba, este impacto es estadísticamente significativo a niveles (muy) inferiores al 1%.

 

Sobra decir que este no es el análisis más exahustivo posible, pero sí es el análisis más básico y sencillo que podemos hacer con los datos del IFE disponibles a la fecha.  Con más datos, podría estimarse un modelo mucho mejor especificado.