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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Richard Upward; Peter Wright |
| Abstract: | We provide new evidence on the effects of economic shocks on political support, voting behaviour and political opinions over the last 25 years. We exploit a sudden, large and long-lasting shock in the form of job loss and trace out its impact on individual political outcomes for up to 10 years after the event. The availability of detailed information on households before and after the job loss event allows us to reweight a comparison group to closely mimic the job losers in terms of their observable characteristics, pre-existing political support and voting behaviour. We find consistent, long-lasting but quantitatively small effects on support and votes for the incumbent party, and short-lived effects on political engagement. We find limited impact on the support for fringe or populist parties. In the context of Brexit, opposition to the EU was much higher amongst those who lost their jobs, but this was largely due to pre-existing differences which were not exacerbated by the job loss event itself. |
| Keywords: | job loss; voting; political support |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notnic:2023-17&r=cdm |
| By: | Vincenzo Galasso; Massimo Morelli; Tommaso Nannicini; Piero Stanig |
| Abstract: | We evaluate how traditional parties may respond to populist parties on issues aligning with populist messages. During the 2020 Italian referendum on the reduction of members of Parliament, we conducted a large-scale field experiment, exposing 200 municipalities to nearly a million impressions of programmatic advertisement. Our treatments comprised two video ads against the reform: one debunking populist rhetoric and another attributing blame to populist politicians. This anti-populist campaign proved effective through demobilization, as it reduced both turnout and the votes in favor of the reform. Notably, the effects were more pronounced in municipalities with lower rates of college graduates, higher unemployment, and a history of populist votes. This exogenous influence introduced a unique populist dynamic, observable in the 2022 national election where treated municipalities showed increased support for Brothers of Italy, a rising populist party, and decreased support for both traditional parties and the populists behind the 2020 reform. A follow-up survey further showed increased political interest and diminished trust in political institutions among the residents of municipalities targeted by the campaign. |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10949&r=cdm |
| By: | Seungjin Han; Andrew Leal |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes Competing Mechanism Games Played Through Agent (CMGPTA), an extension of the GPTA (Prat and Rustichini (2003)), where a Principal can offer any arbitrary mechanism that specifies a transfer schedule for each agent conditional on all Agents' messages. We identify the set of equilibrium allocations using deviator-reporting mechanisms (DRMs) on the path and single transfer schedules off the path. We design a lab experiment implementing DRMs. We observe that implemented outcomes are efficient more often than random. A majority of the time, Agents do tell the truth on the identity of a deviating Principal, despite potential gains from (tacit) collusion on false reports. As play progresses, Agents learn to play with their counterparty Agent with the average predicted probability of collusion on false reports across groups increasing from about 9% at the beginning of the experiment to just under 20% by the end. However, group heterogeneity is significant. |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2403.03317&r=cdm |