Nicolás Idrobo

Nicolás Idrobo

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

I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Program for Quantitative and Analytical Political Science (QAPS) in the Department of Politics at Princeton University.

I study politics in Latin America and the methods scholars use to understand it. My substantive work examines how governments and political actors use public resources, legal institutions, and coercive power to shape political behavior, from opposition exit in Venezuela to brokers, contracts, courts, and policing in Colombia. My methodological work focuses on best practices for quantitative empirical research, including how credible designs can clarify political disputes and how misapplied methods can produce serious consequences, such as unfounded fraud allegations.

My job market paper (revisions requested 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. Drawing on Venezuelan administrative microdata and a formal model of electoral autocracy, I show that sanctions can induce selective opposition exit: 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, patterns consistent with selective emigration. A companion project studies how the Venezuelan government used public jobs and pensions to retain supporters during crisis.

In other projects, I study political networks and public contracts in Colombia; how criminal justice reform changed police behavior and public safety in Colombia; and why ordinary features of vote counting in Bolivia were mistaken for evidence of fraud. My methodological work includes the two Cambridge books on regression discontinuity designs and current work on problems that arise when difference-in-differences designs use sparse time waves.

My work has appeared in the Journal of Politics, World Development, and with Cambridge University Press.

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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

Working papers

  1. [Job market paper, new version] Sanctions and Selective Opposition Exit: Evidence from Venezuela. May 2026.
    Revisions requested by the American Political Science Review.
    Latest draft | SSRN

  2. How Police and Crime Respond to Courts: Evidence from Colombia, with Dorothy Kronick and Tara Slough. November 2025.
    Revisions requested by the American Journal of Political Science.
    Latest draft

Work in progress

  1. Unequal Protection: Public Jobs, Pensions, and Political Loyalty under Chavismo. May 2026.

  2. Waves Apart: The Limits of Pre-Trends Tests in Sparse Panels, with Carolina Torreblanca. May 2026.

  3. The Advent of the Inference Era: Science Production in Economics and Political Science since 1970, with Arthur Lupia, Hwayong Shin and Rocío Titiunik. February 2025.

  4. Patronage After the Election: Brokers, Coalitions, and Public Contracts in Colombia, with Pablo Querubín, Miguel Rueda and Nelson Ruiz. February 2025.

  5. Covariate Distributions and Feasible Questions in Comparative Politics and Political Economy, with Rocío Titiunik. October 2023.