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AUTORES
Andrés Acuña1 y César Salazar2.
- Universidad del Bío-Bío, aacunad@ubiobio.cl.
- Universidad del Bío-Bío, csalazar@ubiobio.cl.
SESIÓN
Estudios regionales
RESUMEN
Assessment of political representatives’ performance certainly contributes to the strengthening of institutions and democracy. In that regard, disclosure of political leaders’ capabilities is more evident during crisis events, where the management of resources and citizen perceptions is crucial for a successful process of recovering, reconstruction, and public assistance. We develop a simple model in which crisis can be thought of as an information shock that reveals how qualified is a politician. The main insight of the model is that an anticipated catastrophe will negatively affect the incumbent electoral performance because rational citizens can now estimate more accurately the share of high- qualified candidates. We test this model by estimating the impact of 2010 Chile earthquake on local authorities’ continuity. We find evidence of incumbent continuity being threatened due to the earth- quake event, suggesting a low ability of local authorities to manage efficiently crisis events.