“La soja es peronista”: evidence from commodity shocks and electoral outcomes in Argentina
Date
2025-08
Authors
Garay Adriel, Germán
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Ertola Navajas, Gabriela
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Publisher
Universidad de San Andrés. Departamento de Economía
Abstract
This thesis investigates how exogenous shocks in international soybean prices affect electoral support for Peronist presidential candidates across Argentine municipalities. Drawing on a combination of historical analysis and quantitative methods, the study proposes that the political effects of commodity booms are shaped not only by material redistribution, but also by culturally persistent narratives rooted in Argentina’s foundational political cleavage between the urban-industrial Peronist coalition and the landowning agro-export elite. Using a difference-in-differences design, the analysis compares electoral outcomes in soybean-producing versus non-producing regions during periods of international price shocks between 2003 and 2023. The results show that, following positive price shocks, support for the Peronist party declines in agricultural regions while increasing in urban areas, even after controlling export taxes and macroeconomic distortions. This pattern suggests that some voters interpret commodity booms through historically embedded lenses: as threats to income in rural areas and as opportunities for symbolic justice in urban centers. Quantitatively, the symbolic mechanism is estimated to account for about half of the total regional divergence observed during boom years, highlighting the potential importance of cultural persistence in shaping electoral behavior. The findings are robust to alternative specifications using agroecological suitability indices and placebo tests and contribute to the empirical study of persistent cultural mechanisms rooted in Argentina’s political history.
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Fil: Garay Adriel, Germán. Universidad de San Andrés. Departamento de Economía; Argentina.