A Model of Focusing in Political Choice

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: This paper develops a model of voters’ and politicians’ behavior based on the notion that voters focus disproportionately on and, hence, overweigh certain attributes of policies. We assume that policies have two attributes—resources devoted to two distinct issues (e.g., defense and education)—and that voters focus more on the attribute in which their options differ more. First, we consider exogenous policies and show that focusing polarizes the electorate. Second, we consider the endogenous supply of policies by politicians running for office and show that focusing leads to inefficiencies: voters that are more focused are more influential; distorted attention empowers social groups that are larger and more sensitive to changes on either issue; resources are channelled towards divisive issues. Finally, we show that augmenting classical models of electoral competition with focusing can contribute to explain puzzling stylized facts such as the inverse correlation between income inequality and redistribution.

Type of resource	text
Date created	July 23, 2021

Subject	electoral competition
Subject	issue salience
Subject	bottom-up attention;
Subject	behavioral political economy
Subject	polarization
Subject	income inequality;
Subject	redistribution
Genre	Text
Genre	Working paper
Genre	Grey literature

DOI	https://doi.org/10.25740/fq595jx0234
Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/fq595jx0234

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY).

Preferred citation: Nunnari, S. and Zapal, J. (2022). A Model of Focusing in Political Choice. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/fq595jx0234

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