Nicolás Idrobo

Nicolás Idrobo

Postdoctoral Research Associate
Program for Quantitative and Analytical Political Science (QAPS)
Department of Politics
Princeton University

Hello, and welcome to my website!

I am a scholar of comparative politics and political economy, currently on the 2026–2027 academic job market. I study how individuals and state institutions respond when economic crises and policy reforms change their incentives, and how those responses reshape demographic composition and political competition in Latin America. I also work on applied political methodology, studying best practices for implementing quantitative methods and the serious consequences of applying them incorrectly.

My job market paper (revise and resubmit at the American Political Science Review) asks how economic sanctions can change the opposition an autocrat faces at home by increasing opponents’ incentives to emigrate. The paper develops a simple formal model of when sanctions-induced exit can benefit an authoritarian incumbent and tests its implications with Venezuelan administrative and electoral data. After the 2017 financial sanctions, opposition-aligned citizens were more likely to leave the formal labor market, and opposition-leaning precincts saw sharper turnout declines. These patterns are consistent with selective opposition exit. Related work studies how state protection operated through public employment and pensions during Venezuela’s crisis and uses longitudinal electoral registries to trace internal migration within the country.

In other projects, I study political networks and public contracts in Colombia; how criminal justice reform changed police behavior without increasing homicide; and why ordinary features of vote counting in Bolivia were mistaken for evidence of fraud. My methodological work includes the two Cambridge Elements volumes on regression discontinuity designs and current work on problems that arise when difference-in-differences designs use sparse time waves. I am also developing a cross-national project on economic sanctions, emigration, and political opposition under authoritarian rule.

My work has appeared in the Journal of Politics and World Development, and in the Cambridge Elements series.

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Working papers

  1. [new version] How Police and Crime Respond to Courts: Evidence from Colombia, with Dorothy Kronick and Tara Slough. August 2026.
    Revise and resubmit at the American Journal of Political Science.
    Latest draft

  2. [Job market paper, new version] Sanctions and Selective Opposition Exit: Evidence from Venezuela. May 2026.
    Revise and resubmit at the American Political Science Review.
    Latest draft | SSRN

Publications

  1. Idrobo, Nicolás, Dorothy Kronick, and Francisco Rodríguez. 2026. “On Unfounded Claims of Electoral Fraud.”
    World Development 198: 107155.
    Final draft | Replication | Publication

  2. Cattaneo, Matias D., Nicolás Idrobo, and Rocío Titiunik. 2024. A Practical Introduction to Regression Discontinuity Designs: Extensions.
    Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Final draft | Replication | Publication

  3. Idrobo, Nicolás, Dorothy Kronick, and Francisco Rodríguez. 2022. “Do Shifts in Late-Counted Votes Signal Fraud? Evidence from Bolivia.”
    The Journal of Politics 84(4): 2202–2215.
    Final draft | Replication | Publication | Media coverage: NYT (English, Spanish), Crisis Group
    OAS Response | Nooruddin’s Response | Our Response to Nooruddin

  4. Cattaneo, Matias D., Nicolás Idrobo, and Rocío Titiunik. 2020. A Practical Introduction to Regression Discontinuity Designs: Foundations.
    Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Final draft | Replication | Publication | Erratum

  5. Idrobo, Nicolás, Daniel Mejía, and Ana María Tribín. 2014. “Illegal Gold Mining and Violence in Colombia.”
    Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy 20(1): 83–111.
    Publication

Work in progress

  1. Political Alignment and State Protection in Venezuela: Evidence from Public Employment and Pensions.

  2. Internal Migration and Spatial Adjustment during Venezuela’s Collapse: Evidence from Electoral Registries, 1998–2024.

  3. Economic Sanctions, Emigration, and Political Opposition under Authoritarian Rule.

  4. Waves Apart: The Limits of Pre-Trends Tests in Sparse Panels, with Carolina Torreblanca.

  5. The Advent of the Inference Era: Science Production in Economics and Political Science since 1970, with Arthur Lupia, Hwayong Shin, and Rocío Titiunik.

  6. The Hidden Power of Money: How Campaign Contributions to Legislators Buy Legislative Influence, with Pablo Querubín, Miguel Rueda, and Nelson Ruiz.

  7. Covariate Distributions and Feasible Questions in Comparative Politics and Political Economy, with Rocío Titiunik.