Using Google data to understand governments' approval in Latin America

This paper studies the potential drivers of governments' approval rates in 18 Latin American countries using Internet search query data from Google Trends and traditional data sources. It employs monthly panel data between January 2006 and December 2015. The analysis tests several specification...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Montoya, Nathalia
Other Authors: Nieto-Parra, Sebastián, Orozco, René, Vázquez Zamora, Juan
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Paris OECD Publishing 2020
Series:OECD Development Centre Working Papers
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: OECD Books and Papers - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
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245 0 0 |a Using Google data to understand governments' approval in Latin America  |h Elektronische Ressource  |c Nathalia, Montoya ... [et al] 
260 |a Paris  |b OECD Publishing  |c 2020 
300 |a 35 p 
653 |a Paraguay 
653 |a Colombia 
653 |a El Salvador 
653 |a Brazil 
653 |a Dominican Republic 
653 |a Bolivia 
653 |a Argentina 
653 |a Peru 
653 |a Costa Rica 
653 |a Governance 
653 |a Panama 
653 |a Guatemala 
653 |a Science and Technology 
653 |a Venezuela 
653 |a Nicaragua 
653 |a Uruguay 
653 |a Ecuador 
653 |a Chile 
653 |a Mexico 
653 |a Honduras 
653 |a Development 
700 1 |a Nieto-Parra, Sebastián 
700 1 |a Orozco, René 
700 1 |a Vázquez Zamora, Juan 
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989 |b OECD  |a OECD Books and Papers 
490 0 |a OECD Development Centre Working Papers 
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520 |a This paper studies the potential drivers of governments' approval rates in 18 Latin American countries using Internet search query data from Google Trends and traditional data sources. It employs monthly panel data between January 2006 and December 2015. The analysis tests several specifications including traditional explanatory variables of governments' approval rates - i.e. inflation, unemployment rate, GDP growth, output gap - and subjective explanatory variables - e.g. perception of corruption and insecurity. For the latter, it uses Internet search query data to proxy citizens' main social concerns, which are expected to drive governments' approval rates. The results show that the perception of corruption and insecurity, and complaints about public services have a statistically significant association with governments' approval rates. This paper also discusses the potential of Internet search query data as a tool for policy makers to understand better citizens' perceptions, since it provides highly anonymous and high-frequency series in real-time