The Political Economy: Political Attitudes and Economic Behavior

It has long been recognized that voters bring their political behaviors in line with economic assessments. Recent work, however, suggests that citizens also engage in economic behaviors that align with their confidence—or lack thereof—in the political system. This alignment can happen consciously or, as we suggest, unconsciously, in the same way that positivity carries over to other behaviors on a micro-level. Using monthly time series data from 1978 to 2008, we contribute further evidence of this relationship by demonstrating that political confidence affects consumer behavior at the aggregate level over time. Our analyses employ measures more closely tied to the theoretical concepts of interest while simultaneously accounting for the complex relationships between subjective and objective economic indicators, economic behavior, political attitudes, and the media. Our results suggest that approval of the president not only increases the electorate’s willingness to spend money, but also affects the volatility of this spending. These findings suggest that the economy is influenced by politics beyond elections, and gives the “Chief Economist” another avenue by which they can affect the behavior of the electorate

The roles of political skill and intrinsic motivation in performance prediction of adaptive selling

Previous studies have long recognized and examined adaptive selling behavior as an effective selling behavior in current selling situations. Although some studies assumed and revealed moderating factors that affect the effectiveness of adaptive selling behavior, few studies examined an individual’s skill as a moderator on this effect. This study focuses on political skill as a type of skill that has been recently found to have positive effects on sales performance. In addition, this study includes intrinsic motivation as an additional moderator that enables political skill to be invested for effective selling behavior. Our analysis of 249 salespeople and 145 supervisors in a matching sample largely supports our hypotheses that the positive effects of adaptive selling behavior on sales performance are the highest when both political skill and intrinsic motivation are high

Voice of the Diaspora: An Analysis of Migrant Voting Behavior

This paper utilizes a unique dataset on votes cast by Czech and Polish migrants in their recent national elections to investigate the impact of institutional, political and economic characteristics on migrants’ voting behavior. The political preferences of migrants are strikingly different from those of their domestic counterparts. In addition, there are also important differences among migrants living in different countries. This paper examines three alternative hypotheses to explain migrant voting behavior: adaptive learning; economic self-selection and political selfselection. The results of the analysis suggest that migrant voting behavior is affected by the institutional environment of the host countries, in particular the tradition of democracy and the extent of economic freedom. In contrast, there is little evidence that differences in migrants’ political attitudes are caused by self-selection based either on economic motives or political attitudes prior to migrating. These results are interpreted as indicating that migrants’ political preferences change in the wake of migration as they adapt to the norms and values prevailing in their surroundings.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40100/3/wp714.pd

Partisan Asymmetries in Online Political Activity

We examine partisan differences in the behavior, communication patterns and social interactions of more than 18,000 politically-active Twitter users to produce evidence that points to changing levels of partisan engagement with the American online political landscape. Analysis of a network defined by the communication activity of these users in proximity to the 2010 midterm congressional elections reveals a highly segregated, well clustered partisan community structure. Using cluster membership as a high-fidelity (87% accuracy) proxy for political affiliation, we characterize a wide range of differences in the behavior, communication and social connectivity of left- and right-leaning Twitter users. We find that in contrast to the online political dynamics of the 2008 campaign, right-leaning Twitter users exhibit greater levels of political activity, a more tightly interconnected social structure, and a communication network topology that facilitates the rapid and broad dissemination of political information.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures, 6 table

Elections and strategic positioning games

We formalize the interplay between expected voting behavior and stragetic positioning behavior of candidates as a common agency problem in which the candidates (i.e. the principals) compete for voters (i.e. agents) via the issues they choose and the positions they take. A political situation is defined as a feasible combination of candidate positions and expected political payoffs to the candidates. Taking this approach, we are led naturally to a particular formalization of the candidates’ positioning game, called a political situation game. Within the context of this game, we define the notion of farsighted stability (introduced in an abstract setting by Chwe (1994)) and apply Chwe’s result to obtain existence of farsightedly stable outcomes. We compute the farsightedly stable sets for several examples of political situations games, with outcomes that conform to real-world observations

Political Ambition and Legislative Behavior in the European Parliament

Members of the European Parliament (MEP) typically follow one of two career paths, either advancing within the European Parliament itself or returning to higher office in their home states. We argue that these different ambitions condition legislative behavior. Specifically, MEPs seeking domestic careers defect from group-leadership votes more frequently and oppose legislation that expands the purview of supranational institutions. We show how individual, domestic-party, and national level variables shape the careers available to MEPs and, in turn, their voting choices. To test the argument, we analyze MEPs' roll-call voting behavior in the 5th session of the EP (1999-2004) using a random effects model that captures idiosyncrasies in voting behavior across both individual MEPs and specific roll-call votes.published or submitted for publicationnot peer reviewe

Voice of the Diaspora: An Analysis of Market Voting Behaviour

This paper utilizes a unique dataset on votes cast by Czech and Polish migrants in their recent national elections to investigate the impact of institutional, political and economic characteristics on migrants’ voting behavior. The political preferences of migrants are strikingly different from those of their domestic counterparts. In addition, there are also important differences among migrants living in different countries. This paper examines three alternative hypotheses to explain migrant voting behavior: adaptive learning;economic self-selection and political self-selection. The results of the analysis suggest that migrant voting behavior is affected by the institutional environment of the host countries, in particular the tradition of democracy and the extent of economic freedom. In contrast, there is little evidence that differences in migrants’ political attitudes are caused by self-selection based either on economic motives or political attitudes prior to migrating. These results are interpreted as indicating that migrants’ political preferences change in the wake of migration as they adapt to the norms and values prevailing in their surroundings. Classification-Voting, elections, migration, political resocialization, transition.

White Elephants and the Limits to Efficient Investment

This paper studies a policymaker’s optimal choice between redistribution and efficient public investment. Under political instability, there is myopic government behavior which results in underinvestment. Above some critical value of political instability, it is optimal not to invest at all. This finding also suggests that it may be rational for governments to refrain from anti-corruption investment, even if they are not rent-seeking themselves.political instability, myopic behavior; public investment, corruption; political economy, transition and developing countries

The New Role of Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age

In 2018, Nike, Inc. and Colin Kaepernick released the ad “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” Within hours, the ad went viral, angering some while drawing praise from many others. This act marked an inflection point in the conventional wisdom of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Historically, firms steered away from engaging in highly controversial political issues. However, today, as political leadership declines and polarization plagues the government, corporations must change how they behave. Three influencing factors to this new corporate behavior are: 1) the increased value and fragility of a firm\u27s reputation, 2) the increased availability of information at lightning speeds, and 3) consumers now expect corporations to engage in political issues at a much greater rate than traditionally expected by consumers. Using these influences, a new CSR definition will emerge, creating an updated lens that fits corporate behavior in the digital age, where more knowledgeable consumers require political action from major corporations

An explanation of anomalous behavior in models of political participation

This paper characterizes behavior with “noisy” decision making for models of political interaction characterized by simultaneous binary decisions. Applications include: voting participation games, candidate entry, the volunteer's dilemma, and collective action problems with a contribution threshold. A simple graphical device is used to derive comparative statics and other theoretical properties of a “quantal response” equilibrium, and the resulting predictions are compared with Nash equilibria that arise in the limiting case of no noise. Many anomalous data patterns in laboratory experiments based on these games can be explained in this manner