Voter Response to Peak and End Transfers: Evidence from a Conditional Cash Transfer Experiment

Sebastian Galiani, Nadya Hajj, Patrick McEwan, Pablo Ibarrarán and Nandita Krishnaswamy

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2019, vol. 11, issue 3, 232-60

Abstract: In a Honduran field experiment, sequences of cash transfers to poor households varied in amount of the largest (peak) and last (end) transfers. Larger peak-end transfers increased voter turnout and the incumbent party's vote share in the 2013 presidential election, independently of cumulative transfers. A plausible explanation is that voters succumbed to a common cognitive bias by applying peak-end heuristics. Another is that voters deliberately used peak-end transfers to update beliefs about the incumbent party. In either case, the results provide experimental evidence on the classic non-experimental finding that voters are especially sensitive to recent economic activity.

JEL-codes: C93 D72 I32 O15 O17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
Note: DOI: 10.1257/pol.20170448
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Working Paper: Voter Response to Peak and End Transfers: Evidence from a Conditional Cash Transfer Experiment (2016)
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