IfW Kiel in den Medien
Trudeau’s Populist Pose Could Hurt Canada’s Economy
… We know that populist governance is bad for economic performance. In a recent paper, economists Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick and Christoph Trebesch studied 118 years of data in 60 countries, including Canada. Out of approximately 1,500 presidents and prime ministers, they identified 50 as populist. Those 50 placed the alleged conflict between “the people” and “the elites” at the center of their campaign and governing style.
According to the authors, Trump fit the bill. Trudeau did not.
The economists found that countries lost around one percentage point of economic growth every year after a populist came to power. This underperformance existed relative both to each country’s long-run growth rate and to the current global growth rate, and held for at least 15 years. They concluded that after a decade and a half, national income per person was 10% lower than it would have been if a populist hadn’t come to power. ...
