Voto económico con incertidumbre: El caso de Chile

Abstract

Since Tibbits published in 1931 a study on the relationship between the business cycle and the electorate results, the analysis of economic voting has been outlining a theory that explains the decision of the voters. In this paper we present a model of economic voting, in which voters are assumed to be risk-neutral and uncertain about the prospective economic situation of the country. The voter's decision is based upon an additively separable utility function, which has two elements: the prospective sociotropic evaluation and the ideological distance between the voter and the candidates. The voter's goal consists in choosing a candidate who maximizes the expected utility of his decision. By using a pooled data set from presidential elections that took place in Chile in 1993, 1999-2000 and 2005-2006, we conclude that both the electoral context as well as the leadership are the exogenous factors having the biggest impact over the electoral behavior. We also find that Chileans' economic voting is sophisticated, rational and heterogeneous.