Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/265964 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 9929
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
Decades of investment decisions by central planners left communist societies with structures of production ill-prepared for competitive markets. Their vulnerability to liberalization, however, varied across space. Similar to the effects identified in the "China shock" literature, we hypothesize that post-market-shock outcomes will reflect pre-market-shock structures of production. Tracking voting outcomes at the district level in Russia's presidential elections, we document asymmetric reactions to the liberalization of markets in 1992. Electoral support for the pro-market incumbent declined most in areas with structural inheritances that made them most vulnerable to reforms. This finding sheds new light on an old debate about the importance of "initial conditions" (as opposed to policies) to the trajectories of post-communist societies.
Subjects: 
industrial structure
transition economy
voting
Russia
JEL: 
N33
N53
I15
O15
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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