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on Positive Political Economics |
| By: | Maria Titova |
| Abstract: | How does targeted advertising influence electoral outcomes? This paper presents a one-dimensional spatial model of voting in which a privately informed challenger persuades voters to support him over the status quo. I show that targeted advertising enables the challenger to persuade voters with opposing preferences and swing elections decided by such voters; under simple majority, the challenger can defeat the status quo even when it is located at the median voter's bliss point. Ex-ante commitment power is unnecessary -- the challenger succeeds by strategically revealing different pieces of verifiable information to different voters. Publicizing all political ads would mitigate the negative effects of targeted advertising and help voters collectively make the right choice. |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2509.10422 |
| By: | Alrababah, Ala; Delouis-Jost, Maelle (University of Zurich); Gauthier, Germain; Polak, Adam |
| Abstract: | Do place-based interventions that raise visibility and economic activity affect far-right voting? We study the Tour de France (TdF) as a case of brief but highly visible exposure that combines economic activity with symbolic recognition. Using variation in the annual TdF route between 2002 and 2022, we show that exposed municipalities experience declines in far-right support of 0.03–0.04 standard deviations. The effect exceeds 0.1 standard deviations in recent elections and is strongest in poorer areas and in towns with high prior far-right support. We find evidence consistent with the symbolic mechanism and mixed evidence for the economic one. TdF exposure increases local GDP per capita, effects on voting are larger when French riders win stages, and a two-wave survey around the 2025 TdF provides suggestive evidence that residents in exposed towns report greater pride and recognition. These results contribute to research on geographic inequalities, symbolic politics, and the electoral consequences of place-based interventions. |
| Date: | 2025–09–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:fj4vh_v1 |
| By: | Klaus Desmet; Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín; Romain Wacziarg |
| Abstract: | We develop a new method to endogenously partition society into groups based on homophily in values, using fractional hedonic games as a theoretical foundation. The between-group differentiation that results from this partition provides a novel measure of latent polarization in society. We implement this method empirically using U.S. data from the World Values Survey. For the last forty years, the degree of latent polarization of the U.S. public has been high and relatively stable. In contrast, the degree of values polarization between voters of the two main political parties has steadily increased since the 1990s, and is now converging toward that of underlying values-based clusters. Thus, growing partisan polarization in the U.S. is a reflection of partisan views becoming increasingly aligned with the main values-based clusters in society. |
| JEL: | D71 D72 Z1 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34229 |
| By: | Weiss, Chagai M.; Siegel, Alexandra; Romney, David |
| Abstract: | In our article, "How Threats of Exclusion Mobilize Palestinian Political Participation, " we argue that threats of exclusionary policies can mobilize minority citizens through both electoral and non-electoral channels. Using Donald Trump's 2020 "Deal of the Century" (DOC)- which explicitly threatened the citizenship status of a subset of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the Triangle area-we show that the announcement increased political discourse on Facebook, voter turnout, and registrations to a Jewish-Arab social movement. Bochkareva, Silagadze and Stephan (2025) replicate our analyses and reproduce our main findings. They raise thoughtful concerns about the parallel trends assumption, and robustness to alternative treatment definitions and outcome measures. While we welcome these contributions, we clarify that our core design choices-including focusing our analysis on three recurring elections in 2019-2020, and ten localities mentioned in the DOC-were substantively motivated and pre-registered. Building on Bochkareva, Silagadze and Stephan (2025), and drawing on our substantively justified research design, we employ additional event studies that provide further support for the observable implications of the parallel trends assumption, as well as our theoretical argument that threats of exclusion can mobilize minority political participation. We also address data sharing limitations stemming from platform terms of service, data agreements, and ethical concerns, and explain our matching procedures. We conclude by commending the authors' decomposition of mobilization patterns and agree that variation between institutionalized and non-institutionalized responses presents a promising avenue for future research. |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:i4rdps:262 |
| By: | Denly, Michael; Hels, Benjamin |
| Abstract: | We re-analyze Szakonyi (2025), one of the most innovative corruption studies in recent years. Using data from Russia, Szakonyi (2025) estimates the effect of a political regime having compromising information (kompromat) over its politicians on legislative behavior, lobbying, and re-election. We are able to computationally reproduce the author's results, but we had to make changes to the data cleaning script for it to run properly. While one of our robustness tests weakens the author's results, most of our additional tests strengthen or confirm Szakonyi's (2025) original findings. Finally, we provide a discussion of estimands and generalizability that does not invalidate Szakonyi's (2025) findings. Overall, Szakonyi (2025) deserves wide readership and praise for its innovative methods of studying corruption in an authoritarian regime. |
| Keywords: | Corruption, Autocracy, Russia |
| JEL: | D72 D73 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:i4rdps:260 |
| By: | Assaf Razin |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the two-way relationship between international migration and political regime change, highlighting a feedback loop in which political shifts shape migration flows, while migration itself reshapes political trajectories. Relying on a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) framework and a dataset combining migration flows, regime quality indicators (CHRI), and measures of international integration, we identify three central results. First, substantial immigration into politically fragile democracies undermines institutional quality. The 2015 Syrian shock provides a particularly valuable exogenous case: a sudden, large-scale refugee inflow that bypassed domestic policy controls and provoked sharp political responses, allowing for clearer identification of immigration’s institutional effects. Second, democratic decline increases emigration, draining human capital and further weakening prospects for democratic recovery. Third, international integration—most notably through EU accession—conditions these dynamics, amplifying or dampening the outflow response to political change. Taken together, these findings show that migration is not merely a symptom of political instability but also a driver of institutional transformation, simultaneously reinforcing and accelerating regime shifts toward illiberalism. |
| JEL: | F22 J1 P0 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34242 |
| By: | Bochkareva, Yana; Silagadze, Givi; Stephan, Meret |
| Abstract: | Weiss et al. (2023) study the effect of Trump's peace plan announcement on Palestinian political participation, arguing that a threat of exclusion mobilizes minorities. Their study includes: (1) social media analysis showing differential treatment effects, (2) a difference-in-differences (DiD) analysis of voter turnout, and (3) a DiD analysis of social movement registrations. First, we reproduce their analysis in R and find no substantial errors. Second, we check the parallel trends assumption more rigorously and find that it does not unequivocally hold. Third, we conduct a series of robustness and sensitivity checks, ultimately demonstrating that different definitions of the treatment group and an outcome variable alter the results significantly. Although the results generally support the authors' main argument, our replication raises questions about expanding their grievance mechanism. Our findings indicate that ambiguous and weak threats are more likely to result in institutionalized political participation, while explicit and strong threats tend to mobilize non-institutionalized political participation. |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:i4rdps:261 |
| By: | Kyle, Jordan; Ragasa, Catherine |
| Abstract: | Women’s leadership in policy processes and formal institutions is a powerful pathway to gender equality and women’s empowerment at scale, yet relatively little is known about how key decision-makers who influence access to these positions perceive women’s leadership and how those perceptions can shift. This paper draws on original survey data from 407 elites from 274 agrifood organizations in India and Nigeria to examine elite gender attitudes, their responsiveness to framing interventions, and how these attitudes relate to support for policies promoting gender equality. Specifically, we ask: how do elites in agrifood governance perceive women’s leadership, and how responsive are these perceptions to a targeted framing intervention? We find that elites are substantially more supportive of women’s leadership than the general public in the same countries, yet male elites in particular still express strong endorsement of the idea that men make better leaders. Over half of male elites in our sample in both countries agree that men make better political leaders. A randomized framing experiment embedded in the survey shows that men’s attitudes toward women’s leadership are significantly influenced by how women’s capabilities are framed. Messages emphasizing women’s equal rights and capabilities reduce male elites’ support for gender-unequal statements compared to frames that ask individuals to reject the idea of male superiority. Female elites’ attitudes are more supportive overall and unaffected by framing. These findings suggest that gender messaging strategies should center on positive, equality-based frames, and that elite attitudes are critical to scaling women’s leadership in agrifood governance. |
| Keywords: | agriculture; gender equality; governance; leadership; policy innovation; surveys; women’s empowerment; India; Nigeria; Asia; Southern Asia; Africa; Western Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa |
| Date: | 2025–09–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:176312 |
| By: | Hector Blanco; Noémie Sportiche |
| Abstract: | Prior research shows that restrictive zoning regulations are major drivers of rising housing costs and residential segregation in the United States. In response, a growing number of state and local governments are passing laws to allow for denser housing in strictly zoned localities, despite entrenched opposition from incumbent residents. This paper examines whether incumbent residents' responses undermine the success of these policies by studying new construction permitted under Massachusetts Chapter 40B; one of the longest-standing and most productive examples of a housing policy that bypasses local zoning laws. Exploiting hyperlocal variation in residents' proximity to new 40B buildings, we find that only a subset of larger 40B developments cause property values to decrease, and that this effect is both highly localized and only emerges in the longer term, many years after these developments are proposed. Focusing on these larger developments that are more likely to elicit resident reactions, we find that only a fraction of incumbent residents move out after their approval and that the magnitude of these migration responses is insufficient to undermine policymakers' desegregation goals. We also do not find evidence that incumbent residents become more politically active against future development, as they are no more likely to vote in local or general elections nor are they more likely to vote for repealing Chapter 40B after 40B developments are proposed near their homes. |
| Keywords: | zoning, housing prices, migration, political participation |
| JEL: | R52 R23 R28 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12140 |
| By: | Tianyu Fan; Mai Wo; Wei Xiang |
| Abstract: | This paper systematically estimates and quantifies how geopolitical alignment shapes global trade across three distinct eras: the Cold War, hyper-globalization, and contemporary fragmentation. We construct a novel measure of bilateral alignment using large language models to compile and analyze 833, 485 political events spanning 193 countries from 1950 to 2024. Our analysis reveals that trade flows systematically track geopolitical alignment in both bilateral relationships and aggregate patterns. Using local projections within a gravity framework, we estimate that a one-standard-deviation improvement in geopolitical alignment increases bilateral trade by 20 percent over ten years. Integrating these elasticities into a quantitative general equilibrium model, we find that deteriorating geopolitical relations have reduced global trade by 7 percentage points between 1995 and 2020. Our findings provide empirical benchmarks for evaluating the costs of geopolitical fragmentation in an era of renewed great power competition. |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2509.12084 |