J. Brandts, Catherine C. Eckel, E. Fatas, Shaun P. Hargreaves Heap
Democracies go to war with each other less frequently than dictatorships do with each other. This is an established empirical regularity. However, it is not clear whether there is a causal link between democracy and peace. We use laboratory experiments to study whether there is a causal impact. We study the bellicosity of democracies compared with two types of dictatorships, inclusive and exclusive, where each society is composed of three members. We also analyze how bellicosity depends on the presence of the possibility of deliberation among the members of a society. Neither the ‘voting’ nor ‘inclusion’ aspect of democracy nor ‘deliberation’ in isolation has a positive causal impact on peace. However, when all three are combined, there is evidence that their combination produces less bellicosity than some kinds of dictatorship. It is the availability of deliberation that makes the crucial distinguishing difference for democracy in our experiment. We observe democratic peace only in the presence of deliberation.
{"title":"The Democratic Peace: An Experimental Test of a Causal Relation and of Underlying Mechanisms","authors":"J. Brandts, Catherine C. Eckel, E. Fatas, Shaun P. Hargreaves Heap","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3697287","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3697287","url":null,"abstract":"Democracies go to war with each other less frequently than dictatorships do with each other. This is an established empirical regularity. However, it is not clear whether there is a causal link between democracy and peace. We use laboratory experiments to study whether there is a causal impact. We study the bellicosity of democracies compared with two types of dictatorships, inclusive and exclusive, where each society is composed of three members. We also analyze how bellicosity depends on the presence of the possibility of deliberation among the members of a society. Neither the ‘voting’ nor ‘inclusion’ aspect of democracy nor ‘deliberation’ in isolation has a positive causal impact on peace. However, when all three are combined, there is evidence that their combination produces less bellicosity than some kinds of dictatorship. It is the availability of deliberation that makes the crucial distinguishing difference for democracy in our experiment. We observe democratic peace only in the presence of deliberation.","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131126193","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The growing political polarization and the increasing use of social media have been linked to straining social ties worldwide. The 2016 presidential elections in the United States reflected this trend with reports of fear and anxiety among voters. We examine how election results can be linked to episodes of anxiety through the use of alcohol as self-medication. We analyze a daily dataset of household purchases of alcohol in the weeks following presidential elections. We find that, within 30 days from Election Day, a 10 percentage point increase in support for the losing candidate increases alcohol expenditure by 1.1%. The effect is driven by counties with a higher share of supporters of the losing candidate and is robust to controlling more flexibly for omitted variables related to alcohol consumption. The increase in alcohol consumption is present in the 2016 elections and absent in the previous three presidential elections.
{"title":"The Effect of Presidential Election Outcomes on Alcohol Drinking","authors":"I. Musse, Rodrigo Schneider","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3662663","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3662663","url":null,"abstract":"The growing political polarization and the increasing use of social media have been linked to straining social ties worldwide. The 2016 presidential elections in the United States reflected this trend with reports of fear and anxiety among voters. We examine how election results can be linked to episodes of anxiety through the use of alcohol as self-medication. We analyze a daily dataset of household purchases of alcohol in the weeks following presidential elections. We find that, within 30 days from Election Day, a 10 percentage point increase in support for the losing candidate increases alcohol expenditure by 1.1%. The effect is driven by counties with a higher share of supporters of the losing candidate and is robust to controlling more flexibly for omitted variables related to alcohol consumption. The increase in alcohol consumption is present in the 2016 elections and absent in the previous three presidential elections.","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":"139 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116984368","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper provides a critical analysis of how and when political advertising serves as a useful source of exogenous variation in product advertising.
本文对政治广告如何以及何时成为产品广告中外生变异的有用来源进行了批判性分析。
{"title":"How and When to Use the Political Cycle to Identify Advertising Effects","authors":"Sarah Moshary, Bradley T. Shapiro, Jihong Song","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3404343","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3404343","url":null,"abstract":"This paper provides a critical analysis of how and when political advertising serves as a useful source of exogenous variation in product advertising.","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121628826","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the aftermath of the scandals involving Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, there is now global attention to the nature of the "data-driven" election and the effects of political micro-targeting on campaigning practices and the integrity of our democratic systems. Political micro-targeting arguably serves to fragment political discourse, to accentuate “wedge issues”, to promote “filter bubbles” and leads to a transactional politics where localized claims and promises remain unchallenged. There are macro-consequences of micro-targeting. Still, we contend that the concept of political micro-targeting is vaguely used, poorly understood, and only sparsely studied outside the U.S. This paper analyzes the actual practice of micro-targeting in the 2019 Canadian federal election. The Canadian case holds some important lessons for other parliamentary, multi-party democracies. What does micro-targeting look like to the average voter in Canada? How “micro” is indeed the micro-targeting? The literature tends to assume that political micro-targeting requires a precisely segmented audience, a specific location, and, most importantly a focussed policy message. If so, then how much political micro-targeting actually occurs in Canadian elections? We analyzed a sample of ads (from the Facebook ad library) delivered on two critical dates during the 2019 federal election. We found that only a small minority (7%) met these criteria. Most ads critically lacked precision on one, or two, of these critical variables. Although we did not find widespread use of insidious ad variation witnessed in U.S. elections, we did find visible examples of A/B testing, in which the font, image, or iteration of a certain message shifted from ad to ad. However, to the extent that claims about policies or issues were made, they were generally pitched at a relatively abstract policy level. There is a confusion, therefore, between the obscure micro-targeting processes used by Facebook and the visible manifestation of the ads to the average voter. Although the Facebook political ad library provides access to unprecedented levels of information about political digital advertising in Canada, it is still very difficult to determine why people were selected to receive the advertisements that they did. Our findings suggest a more nuanced understanding of the practice, as well as a higher level of transparency, not only for the social media platforms but also for the data analytics performed through the political parties' voter relationship management systems. Ultimately, we need a more refined, and nuanced, understanding of the different levels of micro-targeting experienced in Canadian elections. Not all micro-targeting carries the same precision. And not all raise the same concerns about electoral manipulation and propaganda.
{"title":"Understanding the “Micro” in Micro-Targeting: An Analysis of Facebook Digital Advertising in the 2019 Federal Canadian Election","authors":"Colin J. Bennett, Jesse Gordon","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3589687","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3589687","url":null,"abstract":"In the aftermath of the scandals involving Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, there is now global attention to the nature of the \"data-driven\" election and the effects of political micro-targeting on campaigning practices and the integrity of our democratic systems. Political micro-targeting arguably serves to fragment political discourse, to accentuate “wedge issues”, to promote “filter bubbles” and leads to a transactional politics where localized claims and promises remain unchallenged. There are macro-consequences of micro-targeting. \u0000 \u0000Still, we contend that the concept of political micro-targeting is vaguely used, poorly understood, and only sparsely studied outside the U.S. This paper analyzes the actual practice of micro-targeting in the 2019 Canadian federal election. The Canadian case holds some important lessons for other parliamentary, multi-party democracies. What does micro-targeting look like to the average voter in Canada? How “micro” is indeed the micro-targeting? \u0000 \u0000The literature tends to assume that political micro-targeting requires a precisely segmented audience, a specific location, and, most importantly a focussed policy message. If so, then how much political micro-targeting actually occurs in Canadian elections? We analyzed a sample of ads (from the Facebook ad library) delivered on two critical dates during the 2019 federal election. We found that only a small minority (7%) met these criteria. Most ads critically lacked precision on one, or two, of these critical variables. Although we did not find widespread use of insidious ad variation witnessed in U.S. elections, we did find visible examples of A/B testing, in which the font, image, or iteration of a certain message shifted from ad to ad. However, to the extent that claims about policies or issues were made, they were generally pitched at a relatively abstract policy level. \u0000 \u0000There is a confusion, therefore, between the obscure micro-targeting processes used by Facebook and the visible manifestation of the ads to the average voter. Although the Facebook political ad library provides access to unprecedented levels of information about political digital advertising in Canada, it is still very difficult to determine why people were selected to receive the advertisements that they did. \u0000 \u0000Our findings suggest a more nuanced understanding of the practice, as well as a higher level of transparency, not only for the social media platforms but also for the data analytics performed through the political parties' voter relationship management systems. Ultimately, we need a more refined, and nuanced, understanding of the different levels of micro-targeting experienced in Canadian elections. Not all micro-targeting carries the same precision. And not all raise the same concerns about electoral manipulation and propaganda.","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116191879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
States play a critical role in designing institutions to facilitate international business. We study the effect of autocratic states' time horizons on their attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI) through designing domestic and international institutions. We argue that autocrats with a long time horizon tend to build credible domestic commitment‐institutions that attract foreign investors; however, they are also likely to affect the design of commitment carve‐outs in international institutions, in particular bilateral investment treaties, thus weakening their institutional effect on foreign investment. We test these dual effects of regime time horizon on FDI inflow using data from 80 autocratic states over a 33‐year period and find substantial support for our arguments.
{"title":"What Attracts Foreign Direct Investment into Autocratic States? Regime Time Horizon and Institutional Design","authors":"Lin Cui, Chung‐in Moon","doi":"10.1111/twec.12956","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/twec.12956","url":null,"abstract":"States play a critical role in designing institutions to facilitate international business. We study the effect of autocratic states' time horizons on their attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI) through designing domestic and international institutions. We argue that autocrats with a long time horizon tend to build credible domestic commitment‐institutions that attract foreign investors; however, they are also likely to affect the design of commitment carve‐outs in international institutions, in particular bilateral investment treaties, thus weakening their institutional effect on foreign investment. We test these dual effects of regime time horizon on FDI inflow using data from 80 autocratic states over a 33‐year period and find substantial support for our arguments.","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":"64 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122210396","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A majority of independent voters wants to choose the alternative that better matches the state of the world, but may disagree on its identity due to private information. When we have an arbitrary number of alternatives and also sophisticated partisan voters exist in the electorate, the election of the correct alternative is a real challenge. Building upon McLennan (1998) and Barelli et al. (2017) we show that runoff voting -one of the most intuitive electoral systems- achieves asymptotically full information equivalence. That is, when the society is large, it can lead to the election of the correct alternative under fairly general assumptions regarding the information structure and partisans' preferences.
{"title":"Information Aggregation with Runoff Voting","authors":"Nikolas Tsakas, Dimitrios Xefteris","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3394890","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3394890","url":null,"abstract":"A majority of independent voters wants to choose the alternative that better matches the state of the world, but may disagree on its identity due to private information. When we have an arbitrary number of alternatives and also sophisticated partisan voters exist in the electorate, the election of the correct alternative is a real challenge. Building upon McLennan (1998) and Barelli et al. (2017) we show that runoff voting -one of the most intuitive electoral systems- achieves asymptotically full information equivalence. That is, when the society is large, it can lead to the election of the correct alternative under fairly general assumptions regarding the information structure and partisans' preferences.","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":"423 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122871888","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We model an election with two alternatives in a continuum electorate. Each citizen may either vote for their preferred alternative, or abstain. Their incentives are such that they find it optimal to turn out if and only if they expect their preferred alternative to win. Voters form beliefs about the prospects of winning, based on information they obtain from media outlets. We assume that these media outlets are partisan: They wish to maximize the probability that the supporters of their preferred alternative turn out. Media outlets cannot lie," but they can choose what information to pass on to voters. More specifically, we assume they commit to informing voters if they learn that popular support for a particular alternative passes some threshold, in the spirit of the information design literature. We distinguish two cases: Voters listen to both sides' media outlets, or voters listen only to their own side's partisan media. In the former case, media inform citizens perfectly, and there is an equilibrium where voters learn which side is in the majority so that only that side votes. In the latter case, the media supporting the disadvantaged side provides information. This gives rise to equilibria in which, with positive probability, voters on both sides are confident of winning and thus turn out.
{"title":"Designing Information for Opportunistic Voters","authors":"V. Britz, A. Mamageishvili","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3571781","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3571781","url":null,"abstract":"We model an election with two alternatives in a continuum electorate. Each citizen may either vote for their preferred alternative, or abstain. Their incentives are such that they find it optimal to turn out if and only if they expect their preferred alternative to win. Voters form beliefs about the prospects of winning, based on information they obtain from media outlets. We assume that these media outlets are partisan: They wish to maximize the probability that the supporters of their preferred alternative turn out. Media outlets cannot lie,\" but they can choose what information to pass on to voters. More specifically, we assume they commit to informing voters if they learn that popular support for a particular alternative passes some threshold, in the spirit of the information design literature. We distinguish two cases: Voters listen to both sides' media outlets, or voters listen only to their own side's partisan media. In the former case, media inform citizens perfectly, and there is an equilibrium where voters learn which side is in the majority so that only that side votes. In the latter case, the media supporting the disadvantaged side provides information. This gives rise to equilibria in which, with positive probability, voters on both sides are confident of winning and thus turn out.","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116896966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Indian general elections (Lok Sabha Elections) is billed as the ‘country’s biggest festival.’ India is the second most populous country in the world with around 900 million eligible voters in the year 2019. Making sure that all eligible voters poll their votes securely is difficult to do in a single day. Therefore, the election event in India lasts for several weeks. It has been evident that the general elections bring about uncertainty in the economy while stock prices are considered to be sensitive to all new information and prevailing uncertainties. This paper, therefore, intends to study the impact of Indian General Elections on the stock market performances of the firms. This study uses the election event data of 2004, 2009 and 2014 as the sample. Fixed Effect (FE) model, Random effect (RE) model, difference-in-difference (DID) and a triple difference-in-difference methods are preformed to estimate the effect of general election event on the stock market performances of the firms, measured by market capitalization of the firms and their stock returns.
{"title":"The Effect of General Elections on the Stock Market Performance of Firms: Evidence from India","authors":"Richa Garg, S. Munir","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3536889","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3536889","url":null,"abstract":"The Indian general elections (Lok Sabha Elections) is billed as the ‘country’s biggest festival.’ India is the second most populous country in the world with around 900 million eligible voters in the year 2019. Making sure that all eligible voters poll their votes securely is difficult to do in a single day. Therefore, the election event in India lasts for several weeks. It has been evident that the general elections bring about uncertainty in the economy while stock prices are considered to be sensitive to all new information and prevailing uncertainties. This paper, therefore, intends to study the impact of Indian General Elections on the stock market performances of the firms. This study uses the election event data of 2004, 2009 and 2014 as the sample. Fixed Effect (FE) model, Random effect (RE) model, difference-in-difference (DID) and a triple difference-in-difference methods are preformed to estimate the effect of general election event on the stock market performances of the firms, measured by market capitalization of the firms and their stock returns.","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":"268 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131757385","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
I examine the effect of house price declines on voter participation using a novel person-level panel data set. Contrary to what the “angry voter hypothesis” predicts, I find that a 10% decline in local house prices decreases the participation rate of the average mortgaged homeowner by 1.6 percentage points. Consistent with a financial distress channel, house price declines have no effects on renters and particularly severe effects on highly leveraged households. My findings are consistent with the existence of a feedback loop between financial distress and inequality operating through voter participation.
{"title":"Does Household Finance Affect the Political Process? Evidence from Voter Turnout During a Housing Crisis","authors":"W. McCartney","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3068596","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3068596","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 I examine the effect of house price declines on voter participation using a novel person-level panel data set. Contrary to what the “angry voter hypothesis” predicts, I find that a 10% decline in local house prices decreases the participation rate of the average mortgaged homeowner by 1.6 percentage points. Consistent with a financial distress channel, house price declines have no effects on renters and particularly severe effects on highly leveraged households. My findings are consistent with the existence of a feedback loop between financial distress and inequality operating through voter participation.","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131382787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Americans are polarized not only in their views on policy issues and attitudes toward government and society but also in their perceptions of the same factual reality. We conceptualize how to think about the “polarization of reality” and review recent papers that show that Republicans and Democrats view the same reality through a different lens. Perhaps as a result, they hold different views about policies and what should be done to address economic and social issues. We also show that providing information leads to different reassessments of reality and different responses along the policy support margin, depending on one's political leaning.
{"title":"The Polarization of Reality","authors":"A. Alesina, Armando Miano, Stefanie Stantcheva","doi":"10.3386/w26675","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/w26675","url":null,"abstract":"Americans are polarized not only in their views on policy issues and attitudes toward government and society but also in their perceptions of the same factual reality. We conceptualize how to think about the “polarization of reality” and review recent papers that show that Republicans and Democrats view the same reality through a different lens. Perhaps as a result, they hold different views about policies and what should be done to address economic and social issues. We also show that providing information leads to different reassessments of reality and different responses along the policy support margin, depending on one's political leaning.","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125263081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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