IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/anp/econom/v14y2013i2214_232.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Personal charisma or the economy?: Macroeconomic indicators of presidential approval ratings in Brazil

Author

Listed:
  • Alex Luiz Ferreira

    (Universidade de São Paulo, FEA-RP/USP, Brazil)

  • Sérgio Naruhiko Sakurai

    (Universidade de São Paulo, FEA-RP/USP, Brazil)

Abstract

We test the degree to which presidential approval ratings are related to a series of economic indicators, controlling for the political scenario in Brazil. Results, from 1999M9 until 2010M5, show that unemployment and the minimum wage are the main variables that affect the ratings. There is also evidence that President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva has a higher approval rate than President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, keeping constant a reasonable number of important domestic and foreign indicators. However, when controlled for a time trend, differences in popularity between both presidents vanish as the sample size grows. Our results support the conclusion that the good state of the economy (given no political turmoil) is the main factor that explains and predicts Lula's high popularity.

Suggested Citation

  • Alex Luiz Ferreira & Sérgio Naruhiko Sakurai, 2013. "Personal charisma or the economy?: Macroeconomic indicators of presidential approval ratings in Brazil," Economia, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics], vol. 14(3–4), pages 214-232.
    • Handle: RePEc:anp:econom:v:14:y:2013:i:2:214_232
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1517758013000155/pdfft?md5=cd9d101367db3648fa46f5b42cada891&pid=1-s2.0-S1517758013000155-main.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kevin D. Hoover & Stephen J. Perez, 1999. "Data mining reconsidered: encompassing and the general-to-specific approach to specification search," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 2(2), pages 167-191.
    2. Andrew Leigh & Justin Wolfers, 2006. "Competing Approaches to Forecasting Elections: Economic Models, Opinion Polling and Prediction Markets," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 82(258), pages 325-340, September.
    3. Henrik Jordahl, 2006. "An economic analysis of voting in Sweden," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 127(3), pages 251-265, June.
    4. Adi Brender & Allan Drazen, 2005. "How Do Budget Deficits and Economic Growth Affect Reelection Prospects? Evidence from a Large Cross-Section of Countries," NBER Working Papers 11862, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Chappell, Henry W, Jr, 1990. "Economic Performance, Voting, and Political Support: A Unified Approach," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(2), pages 313-320, May.
    6. Rodrigo Cerda & Rodrigo Vergara, 2007. "Business cycle and political election outcomes: Evidence from the Chilean democracy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 132(1), pages 125-136, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rodrigo Cerda & Natalia Gallardo & Rodrigo Vergara, 2017. "Political approval ratings and economic performance: evidence from Latin America," Estudios Públicos 23, Centro de Estudios Públicos.
    2. Bahram Adrangi & Joseph Macri, 2019. "Does the Misery Index Influence a U.S. President’s Political Re-Election Prospects?," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-11, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gikas A. Hardouvelis & Dimitrios D. Thomakos, 2007. "Consumer Confidence and Elections," Working Paper series 42_07, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
    2. Sakurai, Sergio N. & Menezes, Naercio A., 2008. "Fiscal policy and reelection in Brazilian municipalities," Insper Working Papers wpe_117, Insper Working Paper, Insper Instituto de Ensino e Pesquisa.
    3. Jeffrey S. DeSimone & Courtney LaFountain, 2007. "Still the Economy, Stupid: Economic Voting in the 2004 Presidential Election," NBER Working Papers 13549, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Tai, Chung-Ching & Lin, Hung-Wen & Chie, Bin-Tzong & Tung, Chen-Yuan, 2019. "Predicting the failures of prediction markets: A procedure of decision making using classification models," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 297-312.
    5. David F. Hendry & Hans-Martin Krolzig, 2005. "The Properties of Automatic "GETS" Modelling," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(502), pages 32-61, March.
    6. Sule Akkoyunlu, 2009. "Trade, aid, remittances and migration," KOF Working papers 09-229, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    7. Selva Demiralp & Kevin D. Hoover & Stephen J. Perez, 2008. "A Bootstrap Method for Identifying and Evaluating a Structural Vector Autoregression," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 70(4), pages 509-533, August.
    8. Lux, Thomas, 2008. "Sentiment dynamics and stock returns: the case of the German stock market," Kiel Working Papers 1470, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    9. Mogliani, Matteo & Darné, Olivier & Pluyaud, Bertrand, 2017. "The new MIBA model: Real-time nowcasting of French GDP using the Banque de France's monthly business survey," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 26-39.
    10. Bårdsen Gunnar & Hurn Stanley & McHugh Zöe, 2012. "Asymmetric Unemployment Rate Dynamics in Australia," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 16(1), pages 1-22, January.
    11. Rodrigo Martins & Francisco Veiga, 2013. "Economic voting in Portuguese municipal elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 155(3), pages 317-334, June.
    12. Marcela Eslava, 2006. "The Political Economy of Fiscal Policy: Survey," Research Department Publications 4487, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    13. Neil R. Ericsson, 2021. "Dynamic Econometrics in Action: A Biography of David F. Hendry," International Finance Discussion Papers 1311, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    14. Geert Bekaert & Campbell R. Harvey & Christian T. Lundblad & Stephan Siegel, 2011. "What Segments Equity Markets?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(12), pages 3841-3890.
    15. Barkbu, Bergljot Bjornson & Nymoen, Ragnar & Roed, Knut, 2003. "Wage coordination and unemployment dynamics in Norway and Sweden," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 37-58, March.
    16. Brainerd, Elizabeth & Siegler, Mark V, 2003. "The Economic Effects of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic," CEPR Discussion Papers 3791, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Lennart Sjöberg, 2009. "Are all crowds equally wise? a comparison of political election forecasts by experts and the public," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(1), pages 1-18.
    18. Castle Jennifer L. & Doornik Jurgen A & Hendry David F., 2011. "Evaluating Automatic Model Selection," Journal of Time Series Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-33, February.
    19. Silva-Escobar, Daniel, 2022. "Conducta electoral oportunista y determinantes económicos de la reelección de alcaldes/as en Chile," Documentos de Trabajo 10, Estudios Nueva Economía.
    20. Eslava, Marcela & Streb, Jorge M., 2011. "Comments," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 123271, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Brazilian President; Approval ratings; Macroeconomy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism
    • H83 - Public Economics - - Miscellaneous Issues - - - Public Administration
    • E02 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Institutions and the Macroeconomy
    • C52 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Evaluation, Validation, and Selection

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:anp:econom:v:14:y:2013:i:2:214_232. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Rodrigo Zadra Armond (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/anpecea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.