From the article:
> There are obviously countless issues in any analysis of this type, like how a populist government is defined, how you do the counterfactual, how you ensure you are not getting reverse causality (i.e. bad economic times encourage the election of populists etc) and so on. For those interested in those issues the paper is very readable.
Did you read the paper in question?
Yes, but this is a major problem I have with Economists, they are more historians but speak like they are scientists.
>"Mainstream political parties normally claim that populist parties, if they ever got to power, would damage the economy. We have clear evidence that they are right, and right in a big way. A paper in the American Economic Review (one of the top economics journals) published nearly two years ago, looked at the macroeconomic consequences of populist regimes coming to power. The results can be summed up in the chart below (from this working paper version)"
Rest of blog goes on talking about the paper mostly accepting the premise when first paragraphs admit entire premise might be wrong.