The trial of Juan Orlando Hernández, once the seemingly untouchable and authoritarian president of Honduras, is officially set to begin on February 12 in New York. Hernández, who faces drug-trafficking and weapons charges, was to be tried at the same time as Juan Carlos “El Tigre” Bonilla, formerly the feared head of Honduras’s National Police. Now that Bonilla has pleaded guilty, it’s expected that he may testify against the former president (as may accused former police officer Mauricio Hernández Pineda). This day of reckoning for the former president is one that many Hondurans thought would ..read more

This is the fourteenth in a series of blog posts addressing a report by Diego Escobari and Gary Hoover covering the 2019 presidential election in Bolivia. Their conclusions do not hold up to scrutiny, as we observe in our report Nickels Before Dimes. Here, we expand upon various claims and conclusions that Escobari and Hoover make in their paper. Links to posts: part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight, part nine, part ten, part eleven, part twelve and part thirteen. To sum up: This blog post series examined assumptions and biases in Escobari and G ..read more

El 5 de diciembre de 2022, el Departamento del Hemisferio Occidental del Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) publicó un informe titulado “Regional Spillovers from the Venezuelan Crisis” (Efectos de derrame regional de la crisis venezolana), que evalúa las causas de la crisis económica de Venezuela, las causas de la emigración récord del país y el impacto que esta afluencia de emigrantes venezolanos ha tenido en los países vecinos. Aunque se trata de temas de investigación dignos de estudio y el informe tiene mucho valor, los autores Álvarez et al. omiten curiosamente una pieza fundamental del ..read more

This is the thirteenth in a series of blog posts addressing a report by Diego Escobari and Gary Hoover covering the 2019 presidential election in Bolivia. Their conclusions do not hold up to scrutiny, as we observe in our report Nickels Before Dimes. Here, we expand upon various claims and conclusions that Escobari and Hoover make in their paper. Links to posts: part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight, part nine, part ten, part eleven, and part twelve. In the last post, we observed that — consistent with plausible benign explanations of the electi ..read more

On December 5, 2022, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Western Hemisphere Department published a report titled “Regional Spillovers from the Venezuelan Crisis,” which assesses the causes of Venezuela’s economic crisis, the drivers of the country’s record emigration, and the impact that this influx of Venezuelan migrants has had on neighboring countries. While these are worthy topics of research, and there is much of value in the report, authors Alvarez et al. curiously omit a critical piece of the puzzle, and one of the single most important factors contributing to Venezuela’s current ec ..read more

This is the eleventh in a series of blog posts addressing a report by Diego Escobari and Gary Hoover covering the 2019 presidential election in Bolivia. Their conclusions do not hold up to scrutiny, as we observe in our report Nickels Before Dimes. Here, we expand upon various claims and conclusions that Escobari and Hoover make in their paper. Links to posts: part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight, part nine, and part ten. Earlier, we observed that even if geography is stable from one e ..read more

This is the tenth in a series of blog posts addressing a report by Diego Escobari and Gary Hoover covering the 2019 presidential election in Bolivia. Their conclusions do not hold up to scrutiny, as we observe in our report Nickels Before Dimes. Here, we expand upon various claims and conclusions that Escobari and Hoover make in their paper. Links to posts: part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight, and part nine. In the previous post, we observed that even if geography is stable from one election to another, there is no guarantee that the effe ..read more

This is the ninth in a series of blog posts addressing a report by Diego Escobari and Gary Hoover covering the 2019 presidential election in Bolivia. Their conclusions do not hold up to scrutiny, as we observe in our report Nickels Before Dimes. Here, we expand upon various claims and conclusions that Escobari and Hoover make in their paper. Links to posts: part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, and part eight. In the previous post, we adjusted the average for a precinct to match the average for the entire election while preserving the variability of pollin ..read more

This is the eighth in a series of blog posts addressing a report by Diego Escobari and Gary Hoover covering the 2019 presidential election in Bolivia. Their conclusions do not hold up to scrutiny, as we observe in our report Nickels Before Dimes. Here, we expand upon various claims and conclusions that Escobari and Hoover make in their paper. Links to previous posts: part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six and part seven. In the previous post, we investigated the confounding effects of rurality and socioeconomic status on a naive estimate of fraud. We noted that if we co ..read more

This is the seventh in a series of blog posts addressing a report by Diego Escobari and Gary Hoover covering the 2019 presidential election in Bolivia. Their conclusions do not hold up to scrutiny, as we observe in our report Nickels Before Dimes. Here, we expand upon various claims and conclusions that Escobari and Hoover make in their paper. Links to past posts: part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, and part six. In the previous post, we took note of an error in the margin calculations by Escobari and Hoover. Though the effect on their calculations was small, the incorrect us ..read more