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Information and Economic Voting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2016

Jonathan Rogers  and
Marcelo Tyszler
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Abstract

The connection between the economy and vote choice continues to garner interest both in the academic and popular press. To isolate the effects of economic considerations, we develop a laboratory experiment that allows us to vary these considerations at three levels: the individual, community, and national economy. Choices by policymakers directly affect outcomes at each of these levels, allowing us to test for egotropic, “communotropic,” and sociotropic voting, as well as examine information search. We observe significant demand for information and that demand decreases with the complexity of the environment. Moreover, information demand is positively associated with other-regarding behavior.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , October 2018 , pp. 753 - 770
Copyright
© The European Political Science Association 2016 

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Footnotes

*

Jonathan Rogers, PhD, Visiting Assistant Research Professor, Division of Social Science, New York University Abu Dhabi, PO Box 129188 Abu Dhabi, UAE ([email protected]). Marcelo Tyszler, PhD, Senior Advisor, Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), Postbus 95001, 1090 HA Amsterdam Nederland ([email protected]). Previous versions of this paper have been presented at the APSA and MPSA conferences, as well as at the IMEBE Conference in Barcelona. This project has benefited greatly from the advice and wisdom of Jens Grosser and Arthur Schram, also from comments by the seminar participants at CREED, NYU, and the xs/fs cluster at Florida State University. Funding for this project was provided by Jens Grosser, the Department of Political Science at Florida State University, and the Research Priority Area Behavioral Economics of the University of Amsterdam. To view supplementary material for this article, please visit http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2016.27

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