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

Sebastian Galiani, Nadya Hajj, Patrick McEwan, Pablo Ibarraran () and Nandita Krishnaswamy

No 22588, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

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: H3 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-exp, nep-lam, nep-ltv, nep-pol and nep-sog
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Published as Sebastian Galiani & Nadya Hajj & Patrick J. McEwan & Pablo Ibarrarán & Nandita Krishnaswamy, 2019. "Voter Response to Peak and End Transfers: Evidence from a Conditional Cash Transfer Experiment," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, vol 11(3), pages 232-260.

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Journal Article: Voter Response to Peak and End Transfers: Evidence from a Conditional Cash Transfer Experiment (2019)
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