Econ Internal Seminar Series – Reforms and Protests – Sofoklis Goulas, Brookings Institute Fellow

UniPi Economics Department Internal Seminar Series 2023-2024

Presenter: Sofoklis Goulas, Brookings Institute Fellow

Title: Reforms and Protests

Brief Description: This paper investigates the impact of reforms on strikes and riots.  I construct a novel dataset of high frequency observations on new legislation voted in the Hellenic Parliament and the daily incidence of strikes and riots during a period of drastic fiscal adjustment. I exploit day-to-day variation in legislative reform efforts of the parliament and protest activity on the streets to identify the impact of reforms on protests. The incidence of strikes and riots rises sharply in the days prior to the voting day of a reform bill in the parliament, while it dies out slowly in the days following the vote. The results suggest that a large share of protest activity is explained by expressive, rather than instrumental, motivations. Reforms of fiscal consequence are associated with higher protest incidence and duration. The results show a strong and positive association between the pervasiveness of a reform bill–proxied by its length in pages– and the incidence of riots the day prior to and the day immediately after its vote in the parliament.