Economics and Ideology: Causal Evidence of the Impact of Economic Conditions on Support for Redistribution and Other Ballot Proposals
Eric Brunner (),
Stephen Ross and
Ebonya L. Washington
No 14091, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Abstract:
Using California ballot proposition returns and exogenous shifts to labor demand, we provide the first large-scale causal evidence of the impact of economic conditions on policy preferences. Consistent with economic theory, we find that positive economic shocks decrease support for redistributive policies. More notably, we find evidence of a need for cognitive consistency in voting behavior as economic shocks have a smaller significant impact on voting on non-economic ballot issues. While we also demonstrate that positive shocks decrease turnout, we present evidence that our results reflect changes to the electorate's preferences and not simply to its composition.
JEL-codes: D72 H0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pol and nep-ure
Note: POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)
Published as “Economics and Policy Preferences: Causal Evidence of the Impact of Economic Conditions on Support for Redistribution and Other Proposals,” Review of Economics and Statistics (2011), 93(3): 888-906 (with Eric Brunner and Stephen L. Ross)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14091.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
Working Paper: Economics and Ideology: Causal Evidence of the Impact of Economic Conditions on Support for Redistribution and Other Ballot Proposal (2008) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14091
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14091
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().