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on Positive Political Economics |
| By: | Charles Angelucci; Michel Gutmann; Andrea Prat |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a model of news discernment to explore the influence of elections on the formation of partisan-driven parallel information universes. Using survey data from news quizzes administered during and outside the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the model shows that partisan congruence’s impact on news discernment is substantially amplified during election periods. Outside an election, when faced with a true and a fake news story and asked to select the most likely true story, an individual is 4% more likely to choose the true story if it favors their party; in the days prior to the election, this increases to 11%. |
| JEL: | D72 |
| Date: | 2024–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32802 |
| By: | Nupia Martínez, Oscar (Universidad de los Andes); Álvarez Gallo, Carlos Andrés (Universidad de los Andes) |
| Abstract: | We explore the impact of social protests on individual attitudes toward politics, human rights, and issues related to political economy. We use a unique panel dataset to analyze the effects of significant exposure to large-scale protests in 2019 in Colombia. The primary grievances fueling these social movements included dissatisfaction with the political elite, human rights violations, income inequality, and corruption. Our findings indicate that protests significantly alter individuals’ beliefs regarding some, but not all, of their core demands. We document a significant negative effect of protests on the likelihood of sympathizing with political parties and a positive effect on the appreciation for human rights. However, less robust evidence suggests that protests may decrease the probability of individuals endorsing a political ideology or accepting clientelistic offers. Additionally, we find no significant impact of demonstrations on individuals’ overall political ideology, their support for democratic elections, or their endorsement of distributive policies. |
| Keywords: | Social protest; political attitudes; political behavior; ideology; human rights; income distribution; clientelism. |
| JEL: | D72 D73 D74 D91 K38 |
| Date: | 2024–08–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:021190 |
| By: | Anton Brännlund; David Cesarini; Karl-Oskar Lindgren; Erik Lindqvist; Sven Oskarsson; Robert Östling |
| Abstract: | The rich tend to support policies favoring the affluent and are over-represented among both voters and legislators. This paper investigates whether these correlations reflect causal effects of wealth by leveraging random, positive wealth shocks in the form of lottery prizes. Compared to suitably matched controls, large-prize winners are no more likely to cast votes in national elections or run for political office. We also find no significant effects of parents’ lottery winnings on their children’s political participation. But winners of large lottery prizes become more negative toward taxes on wealth, real estate and inheritances. Although we do not detect any statistically significant effects on other political preferences, effects tend to go in the direction of a more right-wing political orientation. We find no evidence that lottery wealth changes moral values or strengthen beliefs in the importance of hard work for success in life. |
| JEL: | D72 |
| Date: | 2024–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32777 |
| By: | Sebastián Einstoss (Department of Economics, Universidad de San Andrés) |
| Abstract: | Can the memorials honoring the victims of state violence influence present-day elections? This paper examines a natural experiment within the Argentinean electoral system to investigate the causal link between one type of memorial and current electoral outcomes. The results show that the presence of “Baldosas por la memoria” (tiles commemorating victims of the 1976-1983 military dictatorship in Argentina) is associated with a significant drop in null votes. Furthermore, my findings suggest that these monuments could be leveraged to impact a particular right-wing political party. The hypothesis behind this result is that these tiles produce a revitalizing effect on the perceived importance of democracy. |
| Keywords: | Elections, Argentina, Dictatorship, Memorials, State Violence |
| JEL: | D72 D91 N46 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sad:ypaper:13 |
| By: | Thiemo Fetzer (The University of Warwick and University of Bonn & CEPR); Jacob Edenhofer (University of Oxford); Prashant Garg (Imperial College Business School) |
| Abstract: | Support for right-wing populist parties is characterised by considerable regional heterogeneity and especially concentrated in regions that have experienced economic decline. It remains unclear, however, whether the spatial externalities of local decline, including homelessness and crime, boost support for populist parties, even among those not directly affected by such decline. In this paper, we contribute to filling this gap in two ways. First, we gather novel data on a particularly visible form of local decline, high-street vacancies, that comprise 83, 000 premises in England and Wales. Second, we investigate the influence of local decline on support for the right-wing populist UK Independence Party (UKIP) between 2009 and 2019. We find a significant positive association between high-street vacancy rates and UKIP support. These results enhance our understanding of how changes in the lived environment shape political preferences and behaviour, particularly in relation to right-wing populism. |
| Keywords: | Local Economic Conditions, Populism, High-street Vacancies, Unemployment, Urban Transformation |
| JEL: | D72 R11 R12 R23 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:335 |
| By: | Lafortune, Jeanne (Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile); Pino, Francisco J. (University of Chile) |
| Abstract: | Previous studies of female suffrage have interpreted the change in voting patterns as reflecting a change in voter composition, in part because only aggregate voting data was available. We exploit the existence of separate counts for women and men votes in Chile before and after female suffrage. We show that inference based on aggregates is inaccurate because men also change their voting behavior. Two potential explanations are provided: men responded to female suffrage through strategic voting and men previously represented in part women's vote due to negotiation within the household. We show evidence consistent with both hypotheses. |
| JEL: | D72 D13 N46 |
| Date: | 2024–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17227 |
| By: | Antman, Francisca M. (University of Colorado, Boulder); Duncan, Brian (University of Colorado Denver) |
| Abstract: | Political discourse has often stoked racial and ethnic divisions, raising the possibility that individuals' self-reported racial and ethnic identities may change in response to an increasingly hostile environment. We shed light on this question by measuring the impacts of local support for California's Proposition 187, one of the first and most well-known ballot measures widely seen to be anti-immigrant and anti-Latino, on individuals' willingness to identify ethnically as Hispanic and specifically, Mexican. Linking data on self-reported ethnicity, ancestry, and parental place of birth with county-level voter support for Proposition 187, we show that individuals with stronger ties to Mexican ancestry or parentage are less likely to identify ethnically as Mexican in response to support for Proposition 187, just as individuals with weaker ties to Mexican ancestry are more likely to identify as Mexican. This is consistent with our predictions that anti-minority sentiment may drive individuals with more observable ties to a minority group to reduce their willingness to identify due to heightened fear of discrimination and hostility. At the same time, anti-minority sentiment may raise the salience of ethnicity and race and thus increase the willingness to identify as a minority for those with weaker observable ties, who are relatively more protected from adverse impacts. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to document a connection between political discourse and endogenous ethnic identity. |
| Keywords: | immigrants, Hispanic/Latino, ethnic identity, elections |
| JEL: | J15 D72 Z13 |
| Date: | 2024–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17195 |
| By: | Anindya Bhattacharya; Francesco Ciardiello |
| Abstract: | In this paper we consider situations of (multidimensional) spatial majority voting. We explore some possibilities such that under some regularity assumptions usual in this literature, if the number of voters changes from being odd to even then some results may change somewhat drastically. For example, we show that with an even number of voters if the core of the voting situation is singleton (and the core element is in the interior of the policy space) then the core is never externally stable (i.e., the situation has no Condorcet winner). This is sharply opposite to what happens with an odd number of voters: in that case, under identical assumptions on the primitives, it is well known that if the core of the voting situation is non-empty then the singleton core is always externally stable: i.e., the core element is the Condorcet winner majority-dominating every other policy vector. We find similar strikingly contrasting results with respect to the coincidence of the core and the (Gillies) uncovered set and the size and geometry of the (Gillies) uncovered set. These results rectify some erroneous statements found in this literature. |
| Keywords: | Spatial Voting Situations; Core; Condorcet winner; Uncovered set. |
| JEL: | D71 C71 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yor:yorken:24/03 |
| By: | Benjamin W. Cowan; Kairon Shayne D. Garcia |
| Abstract: | We examine how politics and policy have affected remote-work rates in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the Current Population Survey, American Community Survey, and the American Time Use Survey, which have several different measures of remote work, we examine how trends in remote work vary by state-level characteristics. We show that state-level measures of the length and stringency of COVID protection policies are not correlated with changes in remote work from before to after the pandemic once a measure of political partisanship (Democratic vote share in the 2020 presidential election) is included in the model. An increase in 2020 Democratic vote share of one standard deviation (about 9 percentage points) is related to an increase in the likelihood of remote work by 1-2 percentage points and the share of remote work by about 3-5 percent. These effects represent roughly 15-25% of pre-COVID means. These results are robust to the inclusion of not only a rich set of individual controls (e.g., occupational telework potential) but also several different state-level controls, including COVID policy indices, cases and deaths, vaccination rates, and economic performance indicators. We conclude that relative increases in remote work across states that are associated with a higher 2020 Democratic vote share cannot be easily explained by differences in COVID-era policies or outcomes or differences in the nature of jobs across states. |
| JEL: | D72 H73 H75 J22 J24 |
| Date: | 2024–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32834 |
| By: | Marco Hidalgo Ramírez (Universidad de Costa Rica) |
| Abstract: | Despite being known as the most stable and oldest democracy in Latin America, Costa Rica had an unprecedented electoral episode in early 2018. In the light of same-sex marriage legal approval, an evangelical conservative party openly against it suddenly took off in popularity during the campaign. For months the country experienced a tense polarizing atmosphere. In this research, I implement an Instrumental Variable econometric approach using district-level data since 1973 to rigorously test whether lower education and poverty fueled conservative support. My findings suggest that historical economic insecurity did cause conservative support against human rights. |
| Keywords: | conservative voting, Costa Rica 2018 elections , economic insecurity, Instrumental Variable econometric approach, district-level |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fcr:wpaper:202402 |
| By: | Lee, Hane; Sobel, Michael |
| Abstract: | Although the topic of opinion polarization receives much attention from the media, public opinion researchers and political scientists, the phenomenon itself has not been adequately characterized in either the lay or academic literature. To study opinion polarization among the public, researchers compare the distributions of respondents to survey questions or track the distribution of responses to a question over time using ad-hoc methods and measures such as visual comparisons, variances, and bimodality coefficients. To remedy this situation, we build on the axiomatic approach in the economics literature on income bipolarization, specifying key properties a measure of bipolarization should satisfy: in particular, it should increase as the distribution spreads away from a center toward the poles and/or as clustering below or above this center increases. We then show that measures of bipolarization used in public opinion research fail to satisfy one or more of these axioms. Next, we propose a p-Wasserstein polarization index that satisfies the axioms we set forth. Our index measures the dissimilarity between an observed distribution and a distribution with all the mass clustered on the lower and upper endpoints of the scale. We use our index to examine bipolarization in attitudes toward governmental COVID-19 vaccine mandates across 11 countries, finding the U.S and U.K are most polarized, China, France and India the least polarized, while the others (Brazil, Australia, Colombia, Canada, Italy, Spain) occupy an intermediate position. |
| Date: | 2024–07–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:etzh3 |
| By: | Edoardo di Porto (University of Naples Federico II Complesso Universitario di Monte Sant’Angelo, Via Cintia, 21, 80126 Napoli, Italia); Angela Parenti (University of Pisa, Via Ridolfi 10, 56124 Pisa, Italy); Sonia Paty (Université Lumière Lyon 2, CNRS, Université Jean- Monnet Saint-Etienne, emlyon business school, GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne UMR 5824, 35 rue Raulin, 69007 Lyon, FRANCE) |
| Abstract: | We study the causal impact of integration on electoral participation, based on the French experience of intermunicipal cooperation (2001-2018) in which integrated municipalities transfer certain responsibilities and fiscal revenues from the lower municipal level to the higher intermunicipal level. Using a discontinuity design analysis with an exogenous population-based rule, we find that voter turnout for municipal elections decreases significantly within newly highly integrated communities. A supplementary event study analysis shows that these municipalities face a significant decrease in fiscal revenues for about two years after the decision to cooperate. These results suggest that when less is at stake, in terms of responsibilities and fiscal revenues in highly integrated municipalities, citizens feel less involved and electoral participation decreases. Furthermore, exploiting a 2014 electoral reform, this loss in participation is found to be long-lasting. |
| Keywords: | Decentralization, integration, electoral participation, fiscal revenues, cooperation, quasi-natural experiment |
| JEL: | H2 H3 H7 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gat:wpaper:2409 |