The Influence of Pinochet on the Chilean Miracle

This article analyzes the impact of Augusto Pinochet’s autocracy on the Chilean economy. The study compares outcomes under Pinochet’s leadership with those in a synthetic counterfactual made of a weighted average of countries with similar characteristics. It finds that, relative to the control, Chilean income per capita greatly underperformed for at least the first fifteen years after Pinochet’s coup. The results are robust to extending the pool of donor countries and expanding the pretreatment period by switching data sets to capture potential heterogeneity of effects. The evidence suggests that Chile’s remarkable economic growth during the period 1985–1997 did not depend on Pinochet’s autocracy. These results further bring into question the effectiveness of the regime to enhance economic growth and the narrative of the Chilean miracle.