Matthew Carnes (Georgetown University) and Isabela Mares (Columbia University)’s paper awarded best paper from the 2014 REPAL annual conference

Matthew Carnes (Georgetown University) and Isabela Mares (Columbia University) ’s paper has been awarded “best paper” from the 2014 REPAL annual conference.

The prize committee was Ken Shadlen (LSE), Daniela Campello (FGV-Rio), and Eduardo Dargent (PUC Perú).

Best Paper

Matthew Carnes (Georgetown University) and Isabela Mares (Columbia University) Redefining who’s “in” and who’s “out”: Explaining Preferences for Redistribution in Bolivia

This paper revisits and challenges a dominant hypothesis in political economy about the preferences and power of “insiders.” The expectation that beneficiaries under a given set of arrangements will push for continuity and against measures that might dilute their gains is central, implicitly if not always explicitly, in many political economy explanations. Carnes and Mares suggest an alternative scenario, based on instability of the status quo arrangements, which is a common if not prevailing condition in developing countries, and they use original data from a survey to show how instability may affect preferences for redistribution. The panel found the paper to address an important topic of great relevance, with an excellent research design and data analysis, and to be nicely written.

 

Honorable Mention

Renato Lima de Oliveira (MIT) and Martin Liby Alonso (MIT) Fueling development? Assessing the Impact of Oil and Soybean Wealth on Municipalities in Brazil

The Lima-de-Oliveira and Alonso paper contributes to the emerging literature devoted to understanding how politics mediate the impact of the recent commodity boom experienced by Latin American countries. Taking advantage of the large variation in resource wealth among Brazilian municipalities, they test the hypothesis that natural resource revenues channelled through the state (oil) are more subject to the dynamics associated with a resource curse than those channeled directly through the market (soybean). They find empirical support for this hypothesis; in comparable municipalities, soybean wealth is positively associated with development outcomes, whereas these effects are negative in oil-rich municipalities.

 

REPAL member Gustavo Flores-Macías awarded by LASA

Gustavo Flores-Macías (Cornell University) has been awarded the Luciano Tomassini Latin American International Relations Book Award by the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), for his book After Neoliberalism?: The Left and Economic Reforms in Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press 2012). Congratulations to him.

Professor Flores-Macías will be attending the first annual REPAL conference in Santiago in June (9 and 10).