Divisive jobs: three facets of risk, precarity, and redistribution

A central challenge in understanding public opinion shifts is identifying whose opinions change. Political economists try to uncover this by exploring voters' economic vulnerability, particularly the relationship between labor-market risk and redistribution preferences. Predominantly, however, such work imputes risk from occupational or sectoral characteristics. Due to within-occupational inequality in exposure to risk, considerable variation remains unexplored. I propose an individual-level, dynamic account of risk inferred from job tenure, contract type, and expectations of job security. These aspects, importantly, account for individual variation in risk and the possibility that one's experience of risk may change across time. The results indicate the usefulness of this approach to risk in understanding changes in social spending preferences

Transition Metal Complexes with Antipyrine‐Derived Schiff Bases: Synthesis and Antibacterial Activity

The increase of death rate, associated with infectious diseases, is directly linked to the bacteria that have multiple resistance to antibiotics. The lack of efficient medical treatment is the main cause of this problem. The synthesis of new antibacterial agents, through various methods, is, for sure, an emergency medical issue. Recent research focuses more and more on the synthesis of complexes of the transitional metals with ligands of Schiff‐base type, as a result of the biological properties which they have. This article presents the synthesis of several complexes with base Schiff ligands, derived from 4‐aminoantipyrine and in vitro research of their antibacterial activities. The new compounds were tested for their in vitro antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus var. Oxford 6538, Klebsiella pneumoniae ATCC 100131, Escherichia coli ATCC 10536, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 9027 strains. Based on the “in vitro” studies, we can say that ten of the complexes synthetized can be successfully used instead of streptomycin, where there is resistance to this antibiotic

Right wing politicians look more alike than those on the left, and voters use this information cue when they know little about candidates

How do voters make decisions when they know almost nothing about a political candidate, including their party affiliation? In new research, Raluca L. Pahontu and Stavros Poupakis argue that when a candidate’s party isn’t known, voters often use an information shortcut – the candidate’s appearance. They find that voters are more likely to select candidates that look more like other elected officials from their preferred political party, and that this effect is stronger for Republicans than for to Democrats

Mind the Gap: Why Wealthy Voters Support Brexit

Wealth provides self-insurance against financial risk, reducing risk-aversion. We apply this insurance mechanism to electoral behaviour, arguing that a voter who has a desire for a change to the status quo -- and who is wealthy -- is more likely to vote for that change than a voter who lacks the same self-insurance. We apply this argument to the case of Brexit in the UK, which has been widely characterized as a vote by the economically left-behind. Our results show that individuals who lacked wealth are less likely to support leaving the EU, explaining why so many Brexit voters were wealthy, in terms of their property wealth. We corroborate our theory using two separate panel surveys, accounting for unobserved individual level heterogeneity, and using a survey experiment. The findings have implications for the potential wider role of wealth-as-insurance in electoral behavior, and for understanding the Brexit case

Risk and Health Policy Preferences: Evidence from the UK COVID-19 Crisis

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic constituted a large shock to the risk of acquiring a disease that represents a meaningful threat to health. We investigate whether individuals subject to larger increases in objective health risk -- operationalised by occupation-based measures of proximity to other people -- became more supportive of increased government healthcare spending during the crisis. Using panel data which tracks UK individuals before and after the outbreak of the pandemic, we implement a fixed-effect design which was pre-registered before the key treatment variable was available to us. While individuals in high-risk occupations were more worried about their personal risk of infection, and had higher COVID death rates, there is no evidence that increased health risks during COVID-19 shifted attitudes on government spending on healthcare, nor broader attitudes relating to redistribution. Our findings are consistent with recent research demonstrating the limited effects of the pandemic on political attitudes

Insuring Against Hunger? The Long-Term Political Consequences of Exposure to the Dutch Famine

Does experiencing a shock alter one's voting behavior? We explore how a specific shock to individuals’ health and human capital accumulation -- in-utero malnutrition -- prompted by the sudden onset of the 1944/45 Dutch Famine affected insurance demand and voting behavior later in life. Given similar socialization patterns, we find conglomerations of affected individuals to be associated with higher support for Left parties more than 50 years after the exposure. Relying on rich administrative data and leveraging the Dutch Famine as a natural experiment, this paper represents an initial effort to investigate and confirm the long-term effects of shocks on political behavior

By popular demand: voter decision making under risk

What is the role of risk in voters’ political behaviour? By Popular Demand provides a bottom up framework exploring voter decision making under risk. The manuscript explores across three distinct settings how citizens’ exposure or tolerance to risk impact their utility and how their demands translate into support for welfare spending, vote choice or the status-quo. Together, the three papers make several important theoretical and empirical contributions. The papers introduce novel measures of risk and clarify best measurement practices to avoid ecological fallacies, they emphasize the importance of private insurance, and show that risk aversion is time variant, and decreases in wealth. The manuscript concludes that risk is central to understanding changes in support for redistribution, the Left, and the status quo. Relying on research designs that account for time-invariant unobserved individual level heterogeneity, quasi-random assignment of treatment, or directly randomize the treatment, the theoretical framework is substantiated with causal evidence.</p

By popular demand: voter decision making under risk

What is the role of risk in voters’ political behaviour? By Popular Demand provides a bottom up framework exploring voter decision making under risk. The manuscript explores across three distinct settings how citizens’ exposure or tolerance to risk impact their utility and how their demands translate into support for welfare spending, vote choice or the status-quo. Together, the three papers make several important theoretical and empirical contributions. The papers introduce novel measures of risk and clarify best measurement practices to avoid ecological fallacies, they emphasize the importance of private insurance, and show that risk aversion is time variant, and decreases in wealth. The manuscript concludes that risk is central to understanding changes in support for redistribution, the Left, and the status quo. Relying on research designs that account for time-invariant unobserved individual level heterogeneity, quasi-random assignment of treatment, or directly randomize the treatment, the theoretical framework is substantiated with causal evidence