Giray Gözgör

Economic Uncertainty and Populist Voting

During his visit, Giray Gözgör will focus on the impact of economic uncertainty shocks on the populist voting behavior in the European Union (EU) countries. His approach is to use the shares of total populism, right-wing populism, and left-wing populism votes as well as a new indicator of economic uncertainty, so-called, the “World Uncertainty Index” (WUI). After applying different estimation techniques, his research has demonstrated that a higher level of economic uncertainty promotes the support of populist parties. In addition, this baseline evidence remains consistent when dealing with potential issues of endogeneity, to address omitted variable bias, and to exclude the outliers. Overall, his findings present the significant role of economic uncertainty shocks on the populist voting behavior in different political spheres across the EU countries.

Mr. Gözgör’s research interests include a variety of topics in international economics and political economy, as well as international finance, applied econometrics, energy economics and climate change. An essential aspect of his research focuses on the effects of globalization and trade policy shocks on the indicators of climate change, macroeconomy and structural transformation. Notably, the political outcomes of the economic uncertainty shocks and economic globalization are among the leading topics of his research interest. He also works on several issues in financial development, such as the credit markets and cryptocurrencies, as well as the interconnections among financial markets. To this end, his research not only implements new econometric techniques but also focuses on new datasets, including new indicators of economic and policy uncertainty as well as new measures of globalization and political variables.

Giray Gözgör is an Associate Professor at the Istanbul Medeniyet University, Faculty of Political Sciences in Istanbul. He received a PhD in Economics from Istanbul University in 2012. He became an Associate Professor of International Economics in 2014. Mr. Gözgör has been the fellow of the Global Labor Organization since 2018. He has also worked at Ghent University and the University of California, Irvine, as a visiting scholar. He has been listed in the IDEAS/RePEc Young Economist Rankings (Top 200 economists, ten years or less category).