Do (ex) leaders matter? Another data point

There is a decent sized literature in economics, finance and political science that attempts to gauge the impact of politicians by what happens in markets in reaction to their unexpected deaths.

Well, Nestor "el penguino" Kirchner, the once and perhaps future president of Argentina died suddenly yesterday. However, the Argentine stock market was closed for the national census (I am not making this up), so any test of market reactions to his death won't be totally clean.

Bloomberg reports that Argentine stocks trading in the US "surged the most since 2008". Hard to say exactly what that means though. They also report that Argentine sovereign risk fell by half a percentage point.

Nestor, who Boz nominates as one of the greatest of all the Argentine presidents, was married to the current president and was planning to run again in next year's presidential election.

Some people will mourn, others reflect on his legacy, but somewhere, someone is getting ready to run an event study!