The Role of Economic Uncertainty in Rising Populism in the EU

Arbeitspapier

This paper examines the impact of economic uncertainty shocks on the populist voting behavior in the panel dataset of 24 European Union (EU) countries for the period from 1980 to 2020. In so doing, we focus on the shares of total populism, right-wing populism, and left-wing populism votes as well as a new indicator of economic uncertainty, so-called, the “World Uncertainty Index (WUI).” Using the fixed-effects, bias-corrected least-squares dummy variable (LSDVC), and Instrumental Variables (IV) estimations, we show that a higher level of the WUI is positively related to total populism and right-wing populist voting behavior. The baseline results remain consistent when we deal with potential issues of endogeneity, to address omitted variable bias, and to exclude the outliers.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 8499

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior ; Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty ; Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models: Panel Data Models; Spatio-temporal Models
• Subject: populist attitudes in the European Union ; voting behaviour ; right-wing populism ; left-wing populism ; uncertainty shocks ; economic policy uncertainty

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Gozgor, Giray
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2020

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/223571
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET