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on Positive Political Economics |
| By: | Amanda de Albuquerque; Frederico Finan; Anubhav Jha; Laura Karpuska; Francesco Trebbi |
| Abstract: | We present a methodology for decoupling taste-based versus statistical discrimination in political behavior. We combine a flexible empirical model of voting, featuring vertical and horizontal candidate differentiation in gender, ability, and policy positions, with a large-scale micro-targeted electoral experiment aimed at increasing female candidate vote shares. Our structural econometric approach allows to separately identify preference parameters driving taste-based discrimination and beliefs parameters driving statistical discrimination through expectations about ability and policy positions of female politicians. Our application to Brazilian municipal elections uncovers substantial levels of taste-based and statistical discrimination. Counterfactual political campaigns show promise in reducing both. |
| JEL: | D72 P0 P16 |
| Date: | 2025–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33859 |
| By: | Cèlia Estruch-Garcia (Universitat de Barcelona & IEB); Albert Solé-Ollé (Universitat de Barcelona & IEB); Filippo Tassinari (Universitat Pompeu Fabra & BSE & IEB); Elisabet Viladecans-Marsal (Universitat de Barcelona & IEB & CEPR) |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the electoral effects of Barcelona's Superblocks pedestrianization policy, a green initiative designed to reduce car traffic and enhance urban environments. Using census tract-level data from the 2023 local elections, we assess the policy's impact on support for the incumbent mayor. Our findings reveal a positive and statistically significant increase in votes in areas directly affected by the policy, with benefits also extending to neighboring districts. Importantly, there is no evidence that the intervention led to traffic displacement, which suggests that such disruptions did not provoke electoral backlash. Further analysis indicates that the policy's effects are not driven by concerns over gentrification or mobility disruptions. Instead, the effects are stronger in more educated neighborhoods, pointing to the role of environmental attitudes in shaping political support. These results contribute to the literature on the political economy of green policies, underscoring the importance of localized impacts in shaping electoral outcomes and sustaining públic support for urban climate initiatives. |
| Keywords: | Green policies, Cities, Elections |
| JEL: | D72 Q58 R53 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ieb:wpaper:doc2025-01 |
| By: | Gerard Domènech-Gironell (Universitat de Barcelona, BEAT); Caio Lorecchio (Universitat de Barcelona, BEAT); Oriol Tejada (Universitat de Barcelona, BEAT) |
| Abstract: | We examine the impact of deliberation on political learning and election outcomes. A rational, common-valued electorate votes under majority rule, after potentially acquiring costly private information and sharing it freely through public deliberation. Our findings suggest that deliberation can lead to free-riding on information gathering, but also encourage the emergence of informed political experts. Overall, deliberation may legitimize purely electoral outcomes and yield more accurate decisions. However, deliberation may also reduce electoral accuracy. We provide conditions for these results and contribute to the understanding of the strengths and limitations of deliberative democracies. |
| Keywords: | Elections, Information Acquisition, Deliberation |
| JEL: | D72 D82 D83 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ewp:wpaper:479web |
| By: | Pietro Battiston; Marco Magnani; Dimitri Paolini; Luca Rossi |
| Abstract: | We analyze strategic behaviour with positional voting in the context of the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC). In the ESC, each country participates both as a candidate, by presenting an artist and a song, and as a voter, via jury members and televote, creating an ideal setting for the study of strategic voting. To determine the final ranking, the contest employs a modified version of Borda voting, where voters are prevented from voting for their country’s artist and song. Nevertheless, we find evidence of strategic behaviour among both industry experts (jury members), and televote. In both cases, voters tend to assign lower scores to close competitors of their country’s candidate. We compare strategic voting in the ESC semifinals, where little information on competitors’ strength is available, and strategic voting is more challenging, with the final, when more information has been revealed. Additionally, we investigate whether the intrinsic quality of songs or other external factors may explain our empirical observations, using data retrieved from Spotify and a specialized website. Beyond revealing that forbidding votes for one’s own candidates is not sufficient to eliminate strategic behaviour, our results underscore the crucial role of information provision, specifically the drawbacks of multistage voting procedures where information is revealed during the election. Overall, they highlight the main limitation of Borda voting as an alternative to plurality voting. |
| Keywords: | Strategic voting, Positional voting, Eurovision Song Contest |
| JEL: | D72 C72 Z11 |
| Date: | 2025–06–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pie:dsedps:2025/322 |
| By: | Carolina Arteaga; Victoria Barone |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we establish a causal connection between two of the most salient social developments in the United States over the past decades: the opioid epidemic and the political realignment between the Republican and Democratic parties. Drawing on unsealed records from litigation against Purdue Pharma, we uncover rich geographic variation in the marketing of prescription opioids that serves as a quasi-exogenous source of exposure to the epidemic. We use this variation to document significant increases in drug-related mortality and greater reliance on public transfer programs. This induced economic hardship led to substantial changes in the political landscape of the communities most affected by the opioid epidemic. We estimate that from the mid-2000s to 2022, exposure to the opioid epidemic continuously increased the Republican vote share in House, presidential, and gubernatorial elections. By the 2022 House elections, a one-standard-deviation increase in our measure of exposure led to a 4.5 percentage point increase in the Republican vote share. From 2012 until 2022, this increase in the House vote share translated into Republicans winning additional seats. |
| JEL: | I10 P0 |
| Date: | 2025–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33904 |
| By: | Haoyang Liu; W. Ben McCartney; Rodney Ramcharan; Calvin Zhang; Xiaohan Zhang |
| Abstract: | Borrowers who refinanced mortgages between 2009 and 2012, a period marked by mortgage distress and dislocated housing markets, but also falling interest rates, were more likely to vote in the 2012 general election than similar borrowers who did not refinance. We exploit an eligibility cutoff in the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) to identify a causal relationship. Consistent with the resource model of voting, the effect of refinancing on turnout is strongest among borrowers with lower incomes and larger debt service reductions. Our findings shed new light on an important channel linking economic conditions and political outcomes. |
| Keywords: | household finance; mortgages; interest rates; political participation; voter turnout |
| JEL: | D12 D14 D72 E43 H31 R20 |
| Date: | 2025–05–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:feddwp:99960 |
| By: | Eric A. Baldwin; Takuma Iwasaki; John J. Donohue |
| Abstract: | Fatal school shootings often spark support for stricter gun laws, threatening the gun lobby’s influence and agenda. To prevent political fallout, do pro-gun Political Action Committees increase contributions after fatal school shootings? Leveraging a novel dataset of pro-gun PAC contributions and school shooting incidents, we implement a difference-in-differences design with staggered treatment adoption to estimate the causal effect of school shootings on contributions to House candidates. We find that pro-gun PACs increase contributions by 30.2% to candidates in districts with fatal school shootings, but show no significant response to non-fatal school shootings or other mass shootings. The temporal pattern reveals strategic behavior: contribution spikes emerge in the wake of fatal school shootings and in proximity to elections, with effects dramatically amplified as Election Day approaches; within two months of Election Day, contributions increase by 1, 730%. These effects are concentrated in competitive districts (margins of 5%). Our findings provide robust evidence that pro-gun PACs deploy targeted financial contributions in response to school shootings, with the magnitude and timing suggesting a strategic counter-mobilization effort to maintain influence in affected districts when gun policy becomes locally salient and elections are near. Our findings underscore a gap in democratic accountability: while public opinion should drive policy change, organized interests with financial power can insulate political candidates from public pressure and obstruct its translation into legislative reform. |
| JEL: | C21 C22 C23 D72 D78 K00 |
| Date: | 2025–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33900 |
| By: | Daniel Halpern; Ariel D. Procaccia; Warut Suksompong |
| Abstract: | The proportional veto principle, which captures the idea that a candidate vetoed by a large group of voters should not be chosen, has been studied for ranked ballots in single-winner voting. We introduce a version of this principle for approval ballots, which we call flexible-voter representation (FVR). We show that while the approval voting rule and other natural scoring rules provide the optimal FVR guarantee only for some flexibility threshold, there exists a scoring rule that is FVR-optimal for all thresholds simultaneously. We also extend our results to multi-winner voting. |
| Date: | 2025–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2505.01395 |