Oscar Barrera RodríguezSenior Research Fellow · UCD
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Oscar Barrera Rodríguez
Portrait of Oscar Barrera Rodríguez

Senior Research Fellow

Oscar Barrera Rodríguez

University College DublinSchool of Politics and International Relations

ERC project Democracy ChallengedResearch Fellow, World Inequality Lab

My research sits at the intersection of political economy and public economics, drawing on behavioural economics to study social inequality, disinformation and political cleavages. My current work, within the ERC-funded Democracy Challenged project, examines corporate taxation, market power and the concentration of wealth.

Job market paper

Biased Information, Biased Preferences: How Fragmented Media Environments Undermine Support for Redistribution

with Lora Pavlova and Li YangLatest version:

View researchDownload CV

01Research

Research themes

My work combines survey and field experiments with electoral, administrative and financial data. It is organised around four themes.

All research

  1. Taxation, corporate power and wealth

    Corporate tax erosion, profit concentration among large corporate groups, and the role of corporate income taxation in shaping market power and wealth concentration. This is the focus of my work in the ERC-funded Democracy Challenged project.

    4 papers

  2. Information, beliefs and disinformation

    Survey experiments on how people process political and economic information: the persuasiveness of "alternative facts" and the limits of fact-checking, confirmation bias in news consumption, and how information about the income sources of top earners changes attitudes toward the rich.

    3 papers

  3. Political cleavages, conflict and institutions

    The social structure of the vote in six Latin American democracies since the 1950s, and political influence on homicide reporting in conflict-affected Colombia.

    2 papers

  4. Migration, development and early childhood

    How immigrants and their native-born children shape native attitudes toward immigrants in Europe, and a field experiment on text messages to parents and early childhood development in rural Nicaragua.

    2 papers

02Selected work

Featured research

All publications
Job market paperWorking paper

Latest version:

Biased Information, Biased Preferences: How Fragmented Media Environments Undermine Support for Redistribution

with Lora Pavlova and Li Yang

A pre-registered experiment with 4,524 German adults separates the effect of reading a narrative about the 2022–23 inflation surge from the choice of what to read. Selection is confirmatory, and a narrative moves preferences for redistribution more when it is chosen than when it is imposed. Only the right-leaning article moves party preference, raising support for a far-right platform by 3.8 points; backfire is confined to the most right-leaning fifth of respondents.

Published

Journal of Public Economics

182, 104123 · 2020

Open access

Facts, alternative facts, and fact checking in times of post-truth politics

with Sergei Guriev, Emeric Henry, and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya

In a randomized online experiment with 2,480 French voters during the 2017 presidential campaign, "alternative facts" by Marine Le Pen proved highly persuasive. Fact-checking improved voters' factual knowledge but did not affect their policy conclusions or support for the candidate.

Published

European Journal of Political Economy

88, 102684 · 2025

Capital vs. labour: The effect of income sources on attitudes toward the top 1 percent

with Emmanuel Chávez

In an online survey experiment with 2,000 French respondents, quantitative information about the income sources of the top 1% consistently shifts attitudes toward the rich to the unfavourable spectrum. Respondents who vote for left-wing candidates and hold egalitarian notions of justice respond most.

Published

Journal of Development Economics

183, 103833 · 2026

Texting Parents about Early Child Development: Behavioral Changes and Unintended Social Effects

with Karen Macours, Patrick Premand, and Renos Vakis

A field experiment in rural Nicaragua tests whether text messages about parenting practices improve early childhood development. Self-reported parenting practices changed, but children's cognitive development did not improve; when local opinion leaders were also exposed to the messages, parental investments declined and children's outcomes deteriorated.

03In progress

Current research

Working papers
  • Submitted

    Political influence on homicide reports under civil conflict

    Single-authored

    A regression discontinuity design around close local elections in Colombia shows that homicides attributed to rebel troops increase significantly when incumbent mayors share the opposite ideology, pointing either to retaliation by rebels or to deliberate alteration of records for political purposes.

  • Work in progress

    Profit Taxes and the Accumulation of Billionaire Wealth

    with Aidan Regan and Alba Valquez García

    Ongoing work within the ERC-funded Democracy Challenged project on profit taxation and the accumulation of billionaire wealth.

04Latest

News and talks

Updates

  1. New version of my job market paper, "Biased Information, Biased Preferences", with Lora Pavlova and Li Yang.

  2. Presented at the 122nd APSA Annual Meeting in Boston.

  3. New essay, "The Unexpected Virtue of Doubting", on the Democracy Challenged blog.

  4. Webinar Economía at Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá.

  5. "Texting Parents about Early Child Development" is published in the Journal of Development Economics.

Recent talks

All talks

  1. 122nd APSA Annual Meeting

    American Political Science AssociationBoston, MA, United States

    Conference

  2. Webinar Economía

    Universidad del RosarioBogotá, Colombia

    9:00 am, Bogotá time

    Webinar

  3. 38th Annual SASE Conference

    Sciences Po BordeauxBordeaux, France

    Conference

  4. Council for European Studies Conference

    University College DublinDublin, Ireland

    Conference

05Writing & media

For a wider audience

All writing

Contact

Get in touch

For research collaborations, seminar invitations and media requests, email is the best way to reach me.

G313, Newman Building, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland