CCHE Seminar Series: Democracy and the Opioid Epidemic

Democracy and the Opioid Epidemic

Carolina Arteaga Cabrales (co-authored with Victoria Barone)
University of Toronto

Friday November 24, 2023, Zoom and HSB Rm. 412

Abstract: In this paper, we estimate the effect of the opioid epidemic on political outcomes by exploiting rich geographic variation in exposure to the crisis. We study its effect on the Republican vote share in House elections from 1982 to 2020. Our results suggest that greater exposure to the opioid epidemic continuously increased the Republican vote share in the House starting in 2006. This higher vote share translated into additional seats won by Republicans from 2014 until 2020, and into House members holding more conservative views. These effects mostly emerged in communities with low baseline Republican vote share. At the individual level, exposure to the opioid epidemic also increased affective polarization and conservative views across the board.

Carolina Arteaga is an Economics Professor at the University of Toronto. She received her PhD from UCLA in 2019. Her research spans topics in education, health and crime, focusing on those most vulnerable in society. Her work has been published in leading academic journals, including the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of Political Economy: Microeconomics, as well as featured in prominent media outlets such as the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, among others