Brazil's first election in recent history without an electoral college occurred in 1989; Argentina in 1995. Did allowing the people to vote directly for president have any positive or negative economic consequences?
I can speak for Argentina. The changes increased the relative power of the main urban centres and specially the province of Buenos Aires (that has 50% of the population, but used to have 32% of the electoral college votes). Carlos Saul Menem, who pushed for the reform (that also allowed him to be reelected), would later say that it was a mistake and that his own province (La Rioja) was now irrelevant on the elections and that it gave Buenos Aires too much power.
However, it should be noted that the popular vote always coincided with the results of the electoral college in Argentina, which, in addition to some arguably bigger constitutional changes in that reform*, meant that it wasn't discussed as much. And though there are still politicians arguing that it gave Buenos Aires too much power and that it changed political campaigns to focus on the province that holds 50% of the population, it's also a bit disingenuous to pretend that wasn't happening before.
However, both the senate and the house in Argentina use a different system that gives provinces more power relative to their population.
As far as I can tell, there's no pressure to go back to the previous system.
* The main change according to most people was that it allowed the sitting president to be reelected (in fact he was an advocate for the reform), and changed the presidential term from 6 to 4 years. But it's worth noting that reelection had been briefly legal before, but the constitutional changes that allowed it (and that in fact, removed all limits to reelection, unlike the newer one where only 2 consecutive terms are allowed, without any limit to the total number of terms served) were removed by a military dictatorship not long after being implemented.