Sebastián Saiegh
Biographic Data
| ID | 801795 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sebastián Saiegh |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sebastián |
| FAMILY NAME | Saiegh |
| SIGNATURE | SAIEGH S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California San Diego |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7508-7804 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 627 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Mitigating policy uncertainty: What financial markets reveal about firm‐level lobbying
Elections can lead to substantial policy changes and, thus, are a significant source of risk. Firms can respond to such policy uncertainty by lobbying, but it is hard to quantify whether they do so and, if so, how much lobbying benefits them. We construct a new dataset and leverage investors’ expectations of variability in stock returns in the aftermath of the 2020 US presidential election to generate a new firm‐level measure of exposure to polic…
Political shocks and asset prices
We estimate how asset prices respond to a range of political shocks, including changes in a country's economic stewardship, national elections, coup d'états, wars, and terrorist attacks. Using an event study approach and daily prices from the Buenos Aires exchange (Argentina) between 1967 and 2020, we find that stock-market volatility increases in the days immediately following major policy-shifting events. These results hold irrespective of whet…
Tax havens and income inequality in host countries
The association between tax havens and income distribution in home states of multinational corporations has attracted much attention. However, studies have not empirically investigated whether there is also a relationship between low-tax jurisdictions and income inequality in host countries. Our findings, based on data from 152 countries spanning 1972-2020 and a range of econometric strategies, reveal a robust positive relationship between tax ha…
Constituency Effects and Legislative Dissent Under Closed-List Proportional Representation
According to conventional wisdom, closed-list proportional representation (CLPR) electoral systems create incentives for legislators to favor the party line over their voters' positions. However, electoral incentives may induce party leaders to tolerate "shirking" by some legislators, even under CLPR. This study argues that in considering whose deviations from the party line should be tolerated, party leaders exploit differences in voters' relati…
Disentangling the Role of Ideology and Partisanship in Legislative Voting: Evidence from Argentina
We present a novel approach to disentangle the effects of ideology, partisanship, and constituency pressures on roll‐call voting. First, we place voters and legislators on a common ideological space. Next, we use roll‐call data to identify the partisan influence on legislators' behavior. Finally, we use a structural equation model to account for these separate effects on legislative voting. We rely on public opinion data and a survey of Argentine…
Executive Constraint and Sovereign Debt: Quasi-Experimental Evidence From Argentina During the Baring Crisis
The literature on whether executive constraint improves the credibility of sovereign debt takes the political regime as the unit of analysis, typically computing an average yield or price for each regime, and then relating that average to regime characteristics. In this article, we take the individual bond issue as the unit of analysis, examining quasi-experimental evidence from two Argentine sovereign debts issued in the 1880s. The loans were so…
An empirical stochastic model of Argentina’s Impossible Game (1955–1966)
Argentine politics from 1955 to 1966 was characterized by the conflict between the Peronists and the anti-Peronists. While each camp could veto the other’s project, neither could advance their own agenda. In his canonical interpretation, O’Donnell ( Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism. Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1973) concluded that party democracy during this era was tantamount to an ‘…
Using Joint Scaling Methods to Study Ideology and Representation: Evidence from Latin America
In this article, I use joint scaling methods and similar items from three large-scale surveys to place voters, parties, and politicians from different Latin American countries on a common ideological space. The findings reveal that ideology is a significant determinant of vote choice in Latin America. They also suggest that the success of leftist leaders at the polls reflects the views of the voters sustaining their victories. The location of par…
Introduction to the Virtual Issue: Addressing Measurement Comparability in Survey Research
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Political realignment and democratic breakdown in Argentina, 1916–1930
This article revisits one historical event that has been repeatedly discussed in the literature on democratic breakdown: the rise and fall of Argentine democracy between 1916 and 1930. First, we demonstrate why the claim that demands for drastic redistribution led to democratic breakdown is not a convincing explanation for the 1930 coup. Instead, we contend that the coup was the product of a polarizing political realignment that led to a legitima…
Political institutions and sovereign borrowing: Evidence from nineteenth-century Argentina
Sovereign Debt and Regime Type: Reconsidering the Democratic Advantage
The literature exploiting historical data generally supports the democratic advantage thesis, which holds that democracies can sell more bonds on better terms than their authoritarian counterparts. However, studies of more recent—and extensive—data sets find that democracies have received no more favorable bond ratings from credit rating agencies than otherwise similar autocracies; and have been no less prone to default. These findings raise the …
Fraudulent Democracy? An Analysis of Argentina'sInfamous DecadeUsing Supervised Machine Learning
In this paper, we introduce an innovative method to diagnose electoral fraud using vote counts. Specifically, we use synthetic data to develop and train a fraud detection prototype. We employ a naive Bayes classifier as our learning algorithm and rely on digital analysis to identify the features that are most informative about class distinctions. To evaluate the detection capability of the classifier, we use authentic data drawn from a novel data…
How Democracy Works: Political Institutions, Actors and Arenas in Latin American Policymaking
Over the past 30 years, democratic freedoms and competitive electoral processes have taken hold as never before in Latin America. How Democracy Works takes a detailed look, from an institutional perspective, at each of the main actors on the policymaking stage in Latin America, emphasizing the extent to which institutions facilitate or hinder intertemporal political cooperation and compromise. It analyzes official political actors and arenas, as …
Recovering a Basic Space from Elite Surveys: Evidence from Latin America
I used elite survey data and scaling techniques to estimate the location of political actors (parties, chief executives, and legislators) from nine countries in a common ideological space. The recovered ideological configuration of each country accurately reflects the description of that country's political landscape given by the popular press and in the scholarly literature. My findings demonstrate that data generated by survey responses can be …
Political Prowess or “Lady Luck”? Evaluating Chief Executives’ Legislative Success Rates
How successful should we expect chief executives to be in their relationships with the legislature? Answering this question is key to making judgments about the political prowess and lawmaking abilities of particular rulers. I introduce a standard to compare the actual performances of chief executives around the world based on the notion that variations in chief executives' legislative success rates stem from the unpredictability of legislators' …
Do Countries Have a “Democratic Advantage: Political Institutions, Multilateral Agencies, and Sovereign Borrowing
This article examines the effect of political institutions on countries’ risk characteristics and the role that domestic political institutions play in determining the interest rates charged to less developed countries. According to the “democratic advantage” argument, democracies should pay lower interest rates than authoritarian regimes because they are better able to make credible commitments. The author argues that such a claim must be revise…
Political Institutions, Policymaking Processes, and Policy Outcomes in Paraguay, 1954-2003
Este artículo caracteriza la evolución del proceso de elaboración de políticas (PMP) en Paraguay durante el período 1954-2003.El siguiente trabajo ofrece una perspectiva general del PMP durante la dictadura de Alfredo Stroessner (1954-89) y explora el contexto institucional resultante a partir de 1989.Tras analizar la fragmentación del partido Colorado, se describen los patrones característicos de la elaboración de políticas surgidas con la Const…
Government Coalitions and Legislative Success Under Presidentialism and Parliamentarism
Are government coalitions less frequent under presidentialism than under parliamentarism? Do legislative deadlocks occur when presidents do not form majoritarian governments? Are presidential democracies more brittle when they are ruled by minorities? We answer these questions observing almost all democracies that existed between 1946 and 1999. It turns out that government coalitions occur in more than one half of the situations in which the pres…
Amateur Legislators -- Professional Politicians: The Consequences of Party-Centered Electoral Rules in a Federal System
The Argentine Congress plays a limited role in the production of public policy and is a relatively ineffective check on the Argentine Executive Branch. We argue this is the combined result of incentives created by several features of Argentine political institutions. In this article we emphasize the role of the country's electoral rules, which place the legislator re? election decision not in the hands of the voters, but rather in the hands of th…
Governos de Coalizão nas Democracias Presidencialistas e Parlamentaristas
Are government coalitions less frequent under presidentialism than under parliamentarism? The only difference be w e the two systems is that unscheduled elections are held under parliamentarism in those situations in which under presidentialism a majority legislative coalition opposes the executive. In both systems, portfolio coalitions are formed only when the formateur party and the one closest to it are relatively distant in policy terms. Othe…
Government Coalitions and Legislative Success Under Presidentialism and Parliamentarism
Are government coalitions less frequent under presidentialism than under parliamentarism? Do legislative deadlocks occur when presidents do not form majoritarian governments? Are presidential democracies more brittle when they are ruled by minorities? We answer these questions observing almost all democracies that existed between 1946 and 1999. It turns out that government coalitions occur in more than one half of the situations in which the pres…
Amateur Legislators -- Professional Politicians: The Consequences of Party-Centered Electoral Rules in a Federal System
The Argentine Congress plays a limited role in the production of public policy and is a relatively ineffective check on the Argentine Executive Branch. We argue this is the combined result of incentives created by several features of Argentine political institutions. In this article we emphasize the role of the country's electoral rules, which place the legislator re? election decision not in the hands of the voters, but rather in the hands of th…
Sovereign Debt and Regime Type: Reconsidering the Democratic Advantage
The literature exploiting historical data generally supports the democratic advantage thesis, which holds that democracies can sell more bonds on better terms than their authoritarian counterparts. However, studies of more recent—and extensive—data sets find that democracies have received no more favorable bond ratings from credit rating agencies than otherwise similar autocracies; and have been no less prone to default. These findings raise the …
Recovering a Basic Space from Elite Surveys: Evidence from Latin America
I used elite survey data and scaling techniques to estimate the location of political actors (parties, chief executives, and legislators) from nine countries in a common ideological space. The recovered ideological configuration of each country accurately reflects the description of that country's political landscape given by the popular press and in the scholarly literature. My findings demonstrate that data generated by survey responses can be …
Do Countries Have a “Democratic Advantage: Political Institutions, Multilateral Agencies, and Sovereign Borrowing
This article examines the effect of political institutions on countries’ risk characteristics and the role that domestic political institutions play in determining the interest rates charged to less developed countries. According to the “democratic advantage” argument, democracies should pay lower interest rates than authoritarian regimes because they are better able to make credible commitments. The author argues that such a claim must be revise…
Using Joint Scaling Methods to Study Ideology and Representation: Evidence from Latin America
In this article, I use joint scaling methods and similar items from three large-scale surveys to place voters, parties, and politicians from different Latin American countries on a common ideological space. The findings reveal that ideology is a significant determinant of vote choice in Latin America. They also suggest that the success of leftist leaders at the polls reflects the views of the voters sustaining their victories. The location of par…
Political Prowess or “Lady Luck”? Evaluating Chief Executives’ Legislative Success Rates
How successful should we expect chief executives to be in their relationships with the legislature? Answering this question is key to making judgments about the political prowess and lawmaking abilities of particular rulers. I introduce a standard to compare the actual performances of chief executives around the world based on the notion that variations in chief executives' legislative success rates stem from the unpredictability of legislators' …
Fraudulent Democracy? An Analysis of Argentina'sInfamous DecadeUsing Supervised Machine Learning
In this paper, we introduce an innovative method to diagnose electoral fraud using vote counts. Specifically, we use synthetic data to develop and train a fraud detection prototype. We employ a naive Bayes classifier as our learning algorithm and rely on digital analysis to identify the features that are most informative about class distinctions. To evaluate the detection capability of the classifier, we use authentic data drawn from a novel data…
Disentangling the Role of Ideology and Partisanship in Legislative Voting: Evidence from Argentina
We present a novel approach to disentangle the effects of ideology, partisanship, and constituency pressures on roll‐call voting. First, we place voters and legislators on a common ideological space. Next, we use roll‐call data to identify the partisan influence on legislators' behavior. Finally, we use a structural equation model to account for these separate effects on legislative voting. We rely on public opinion data and a survey of Argentine…
Political Institutions, Policymaking Processes, and Policy Outcomes in Paraguay, 1954-2003
Este artículo caracteriza la evolución del proceso de elaboración de políticas (PMP) en Paraguay durante el período 1954-2003.El siguiente trabajo ofrece una perspectiva general del PMP durante la dictadura de Alfredo Stroessner (1954-89) y explora el contexto institucional resultante a partir de 1989.Tras analizar la fragmentación del partido Colorado, se describen los patrones característicos de la elaboración de políticas surgidas con la Const…
Governos de Coalizão nas Democracias Presidencialistas e Parlamentaristas
Are government coalitions less frequent under presidentialism than under parliamentarism? The only difference be w e the two systems is that unscheduled elections are held under parliamentarism in those situations in which under presidentialism a majority legislative coalition opposes the executive. In both systems, portfolio coalitions are formed only when the formateur party and the one closest to it are relatively distant in policy terms. Othe…
Executive Constraint and Sovereign Debt: Quasi-Experimental Evidence From Argentina During the Baring Crisis
The literature on whether executive constraint improves the credibility of sovereign debt takes the political regime as the unit of analysis, typically computing an average yield or price for each regime, and then relating that average to regime characteristics. In this article, we take the individual bond issue as the unit of analysis, examining quasi-experimental evidence from two Argentine sovereign debts issued in the 1880s. The loans were so…
An empirical stochastic model of Argentina’s Impossible Game (1955–1966)
Argentine politics from 1955 to 1966 was characterized by the conflict between the Peronists and the anti-Peronists. While each camp could veto the other’s project, neither could advance their own agenda. In his canonical interpretation, O’Donnell ( Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism. Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1973) concluded that party democracy during this era was tantamount to an ‘…
Political realignment and democratic breakdown in Argentina, 1916–1930
This article revisits one historical event that has been repeatedly discussed in the literature on democratic breakdown: the rise and fall of Argentine democracy between 1916 and 1930. First, we demonstrate why the claim that demands for drastic redistribution led to democratic breakdown is not a convincing explanation for the 1930 coup. Instead, we contend that the coup was the product of a polarizing political realignment that led to a legitima…
Constituency Effects and Legislative Dissent Under Closed-List Proportional Representation
According to conventional wisdom, closed-list proportional representation (CLPR) electoral systems create incentives for legislators to favor the party line over their voters' positions. However, electoral incentives may induce party leaders to tolerate "shirking" by some legislators, even under CLPR. This study argues that in considering whose deviations from the party line should be tolerated, party leaders exploit differences in voters' relati…
Political institutions and sovereign borrowing: Evidence from nineteenth-century Argentina
Introduction to the Virtual Issue: Addressing Measurement Comparability in Survey Research
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Amateur Legislators -- Professional Politicians: The Consequences of Party-Centered Electoral Rules in a Federal System
The Argentine Congress plays a limited role in the production of public policy and is a relatively ineffective check on the Argentine Executive Branch. We argue this is the combined result of incentives created by several features of Argentine political institutions. In this article we emphasize the role of the country's electoral rules, which place the legislator re? election decision not in the hands of the voters, but rather in the hands of th…
Governos de Coalizão nas Democracias Presidencialistas e Parlamentaristas
Are government coalitions less frequent under presidentialism than under parliamentarism? The only difference be w e the two systems is that unscheduled elections are held under parliamentarism in those situations in which under presidentialism a majority legislative coalition opposes the executive. In both systems, portfolio coalitions are formed only when the formateur party and the one closest to it are relatively distant in policy terms. Othe…
Political Institutions, Policymaking Processes, and Policy Outcomes in Paraguay, 1954-2003
Este artículo caracteriza la evolución del proceso de elaboración de políticas (PMP) en Paraguay durante el período 1954-2003.El siguiente trabajo ofrece una perspectiva general del PMP durante la dictadura de Alfredo Stroessner (1954-89) y explora el contexto institucional resultante a partir de 1989.Tras analizar la fragmentación del partido Colorado, se describen los patrones característicos de la elaboración de políticas surgidas con la Const…
Government Coalitions and Legislative Success Under Presidentialism and Parliamentarism
Are government coalitions less frequent under presidentialism than under parliamentarism? Do legislative deadlocks occur when presidents do not form majoritarian governments? Are presidential democracies more brittle when they are ruled by minorities? We answer these questions observing almost all democracies that existed between 1946 and 1999. It turns out that government coalitions occur in more than one half of the situations in which the pres…
Do Countries Have a “Democratic Advantage: Political Institutions, Multilateral Agencies, and Sovereign Borrowing
This article examines the effect of political institutions on countries’ risk characteristics and the role that domestic political institutions play in determining the interest rates charged to less developed countries. According to the “democratic advantage” argument, democracies should pay lower interest rates than authoritarian regimes because they are better able to make credible commitments. The author argues that such a claim must be revise…
Recovering a Basic Space from Elite Surveys: Evidence from Latin America
I used elite survey data and scaling techniques to estimate the location of political actors (parties, chief executives, and legislators) from nine countries in a common ideological space. The recovered ideological configuration of each country accurately reflects the description of that country's political landscape given by the popular press and in the scholarly literature. My findings demonstrate that data generated by survey responses can be …
Political Prowess or “Lady Luck”? Evaluating Chief Executives’ Legislative Success Rates
How successful should we expect chief executives to be in their relationships with the legislature? Answering this question is key to making judgments about the political prowess and lawmaking abilities of particular rulers. I introduce a standard to compare the actual performances of chief executives around the world based on the notion that variations in chief executives' legislative success rates stem from the unpredictability of legislators' …
How Democracy Works: Political Institutions, Actors and Arenas in Latin American Policymaking
Over the past 30 years, democratic freedoms and competitive electoral processes have taken hold as never before in Latin America. How Democracy Works takes a detailed look, from an institutional perspective, at each of the main actors on the policymaking stage in Latin America, emphasizing the extent to which institutions facilitate or hinder intertemporal political cooperation and compromise. It analyzes official political actors and arenas, as …
Fraudulent Democracy? An Analysis of Argentina'sInfamous DecadeUsing Supervised Machine Learning
In this paper, we introduce an innovative method to diagnose electoral fraud using vote counts. Specifically, we use synthetic data to develop and train a fraud detection prototype. We employ a naive Bayes classifier as our learning algorithm and rely on digital analysis to identify the features that are most informative about class distinctions. To evaluate the detection capability of the classifier, we use authentic data drawn from a novel data…
Sovereign Debt and Regime Type: Reconsidering the Democratic Advantage
The literature exploiting historical data generally supports the democratic advantage thesis, which holds that democracies can sell more bonds on better terms than their authoritarian counterparts. However, studies of more recent—and extensive—data sets find that democracies have received no more favorable bond ratings from credit rating agencies than otherwise similar autocracies; and have been no less prone to default. These findings raise the …
Political institutions and sovereign borrowing: Evidence from nineteenth-century Argentina
Political realignment and democratic breakdown in Argentina, 1916–1930
This article revisits one historical event that has been repeatedly discussed in the literature on democratic breakdown: the rise and fall of Argentine democracy between 1916 and 1930. First, we demonstrate why the claim that demands for drastic redistribution led to democratic breakdown is not a convincing explanation for the 1930 coup. Instead, we contend that the coup was the product of a polarizing political realignment that led to a legitima…
Using Joint Scaling Methods to Study Ideology and Representation: Evidence from Latin America
In this article, I use joint scaling methods and similar items from three large-scale surveys to place voters, parties, and politicians from different Latin American countries on a common ideological space. The findings reveal that ideology is a significant determinant of vote choice in Latin America. They also suggest that the success of leftist leaders at the polls reflects the views of the voters sustaining their victories. The location of par…
Introduction to the Virtual Issue: Addressing Measurement Comparability in Survey Research
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
An empirical stochastic model of Argentina’s Impossible Game (1955–1966)
Argentine politics from 1955 to 1966 was characterized by the conflict between the Peronists and the anti-Peronists. While each camp could veto the other’s project, neither could advance their own agenda. In his canonical interpretation, O’Donnell ( Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism. Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1973) concluded that party democracy during this era was tantamount to an ‘…
Disentangling the Role of Ideology and Partisanship in Legislative Voting: Evidence from Argentina
We present a novel approach to disentangle the effects of ideology, partisanship, and constituency pressures on roll‐call voting. First, we place voters and legislators on a common ideological space. Next, we use roll‐call data to identify the partisan influence on legislators' behavior. Finally, we use a structural equation model to account for these separate effects on legislative voting. We rely on public opinion data and a survey of Argentine…
Executive Constraint and Sovereign Debt: Quasi-Experimental Evidence From Argentina During the Baring Crisis
The literature on whether executive constraint improves the credibility of sovereign debt takes the political regime as the unit of analysis, typically computing an average yield or price for each regime, and then relating that average to regime characteristics. In this article, we take the individual bond issue as the unit of analysis, examining quasi-experimental evidence from two Argentine sovereign debts issued in the 1880s. The loans were so…
Constituency Effects and Legislative Dissent Under Closed-List Proportional Representation
According to conventional wisdom, closed-list proportional representation (CLPR) electoral systems create incentives for legislators to favor the party line over their voters' positions. However, electoral incentives may induce party leaders to tolerate "shirking" by some legislators, even under CLPR. This study argues that in considering whose deviations from the party line should be tolerated, party leaders exploit differences in voters' relati…
Political shocks and asset prices
We estimate how asset prices respond to a range of political shocks, including changes in a country's economic stewardship, national elections, coup d'états, wars, and terrorist attacks. Using an event study approach and daily prices from the Buenos Aires exchange (Argentina) between 1967 and 2020, we find that stock-market volatility increases in the days immediately following major policy-shifting events. These results hold irrespective of whet…
Tax havens and income inequality in host countries
The association between tax havens and income distribution in home states of multinational corporations has attracted much attention. However, studies have not empirically investigated whether there is also a relationship between low-tax jurisdictions and income inequality in host countries. Our findings, based on data from 152 countries spanning 1972-2020 and a range of econometric strategies, reveal a robust positive relationship between tax ha…
Mitigating policy uncertainty: What financial markets reveal about firm‐level lobbying
Elections can lead to substantial policy changes and, thus, are a significant source of risk. Firms can respond to such policy uncertainty by lobbying, but it is hard to quantify whether they do so and, if so, how much lobbying benefits them. We construct a new dataset and leverage investors’ expectations of variability in stock returns in the aftermath of the 2020 US presidential election to generate a new firm‐level measure of exposure to polic…
Political science (17 works) · Politics (17 works) · Economics (14 works) · Law (11 works) · Law (11 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (10 works) · Politics and Society in Latin America (10 works) · Political economy (9 works) · Democracy (8 works) · Public Administration (6 works)