Politics of Food: An Experiment on Trust in Expert Regulation and Economic Costs of Political Polarization

Christopher Burnitt, Jared Gars and Mateusz Stalinski
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Christopher Burnitt: University of Warwick
Jared Gars: University of Florida and JILAEE
Mateusz Stalinski: University of Warwick & CAGE

The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics

Abstract: Addressing rising political polarization has become a focal point for policy makers. Yet, there is little evidence of its economic impacts, especially in contexts where partisanship cannot be easily hidden. To fill this gap, we study a novel channel: the perception of out-group partisan oversight of independent civil service reduces trust in regulation, affecting key markets (e.g., food and medicine). First, we motivate it by demonstrating the salience of the association between the president and expert regulators in US media reporting. Second, in a pre-registered experiment with 5,566 individuals, we test the channel by exploiting an alignment in the way that the EPA under Trump and Biden defended the safety of spraying citrus crops with antibiotics. This enabled us to randomize the partisanship of the administration, holding the scientific arguments constant. Despite the EPA’s independence, out-group administration reduces support for the spraying by 26%, lowers trust in the EPA’s evaluation, and increases donations to an NGO opposing the spraying by 15%. We find no overall effect on the willingness to pay for citrus products, measured in an obfuscated follow-up survey. However, we document significant differences in effects for elastic vs. inelastic consumers. Taken together, polarization has the potential to affect economic decisions. However, a reduction in trust might not translate into lower demand, especially for inelastic consumers. JEL Codes: D12 ; D83 ; P16 ; Q11 ; Q13 ; Q18 ; Z18

Keywords: political polarization; civil service; trust in regulation; trust in science; food policy; partisan identity; consumer demand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-exp, nep-mac, nep-pol and nep-soc
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:warwec:1542

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