How Populism Persists: Internal Migration and Economic Shocks by Thomas Flaherty :: SSRN

Why does populism sometimes persist across time and space? I argue that economic shocks generate lasting political pressures favoring populists only where residents face high barriers to emigration. In contrast, depressed regions with greater mobility recover economically and politically. I introduce original measures of internal migration using address changes in IRS tax returns and regional variation in housing relocation costs. Exploiting the 1994 Peso Crisis as an exogenous trade shock to U.S. local economies, I show that trade exposure lastingly increased populist vote shares from 1996 to 2016-but only where emigration was constrained. Limited emigration due to housing affordability was especially linked to enduring populism, while areas with more mobile populations experienced faster employment and wage recovery and a shorterlived backlash. Placebo tests rule out compositional effects of emigration. These findings identify migration barriers as a key intensifier of globalization'

Why does populism sometimes persist across time and space? I argue that economic shocks generate lasting political pressures favoring populists only where residents face high barriers to emigration. In contrast, depressed regions with greater mobility recover economically and politically. I introduce original measures of internal migration using address changes in IRS tax returns and regional variation in housing relocation costs. Exploiting the 1994 Peso Crisis as an exogenous trade shock to U.S. local economies, I show that trade exposure lastingly increased populist vote shares from 1996 to