Framing Effects in Political Decision Making: Evidence From a Natural Voting Experiment

Monika Bütler () and Michel Maréchal

University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2007 from Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen

Abstract: This paper analyzes a recent ballot in which two virtually identical popular initiatives, both demanding a decrease in the legal age of retirement in Switzerland, led to differences in approval rates of nearly seven percentage points. Based on this unique natural experiment, the existence of emphasis framing effects is tested for and their determinants are identified outside of the controlled settings of laboratories. Nonetheless, the analyzed setting allows for considerably more control than usually available in the field: All party, government and interest group recommendations were symmetric for both initiatives, and the simultaneous vote rules out potential variation of individual preferences and compositional changes of the electorate over time. Using community and individual level data it is shown that the difference in approval rates is largely due to the different emphases in the initiatives' titles.

Keywords: Framing Effect; Voting; Direct Democracy; Pension Reform; Bounded Rationality; Natural Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 D72 H55 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2007-02
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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http://ux-tauri.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/dp2007/DP04-Bu.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Framing Effects in Political Decision Making: Evidence from a Natural Voting Experiment (2007)
Working Paper: Framing Effects in Political Decision Making: Evidence From a Natural Voting Experiment (2007)
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