Left, Right, Left: Income, Learning and Political Dynamics

John Morrow and Michael Carter

No 19498, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The political left turn in Latin America, which lagged its transition to liberalized market economies by a decade or more, challenges conventional economic explanations of voting behavior. This paper generalizes the forward-looking voter model to a broad range of dynamic, non-concave income processes. The model implies support for redistributive policies materializes rapidly if few prospects of upward mobility are present. In contrast, modeling voters' ideologically charged beliefs about income dynamics shows a slow and polarizing shift toward redistributive preferences occurs. Simulation using fitted income dynamics suggests that imperfect information better accounts for the shift back to the left, and offers additional insights about political dynamics.

JEL-codes: D31 D72 D83 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
Note: DEV POL
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Working Paper: Left, right, left: income, learning and political dynamics (2013)
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