Exogenous Policy
If we look at empirical evidence, it seems that people do not vote in a self interested way, but rather vote based on group-interest. Given this fact, is policy really endogenous? It seems that the most important characteristics in the liberal/conservative divide are age, race, gender, ethnicity, religion- things not easily influenced by policy. Income, education, and employment status matter little relative to these other personal characteristics. So (ignoring any effects of the social choice mechanism), is policy determined only by these exogenous characteristics? -- As opposed to policy being shaped by characteristics that are in turned shaped by policy outcomes. I'd interested in hearing thoughts on how policy influences the ideological distribution. Jason DeBacker
Re: Exogenous Policy
I think you are mixing up correlation and causation here. On what basis do you say that most important characteristics in the liberal/conservative divide are age, race, gender, ...? Perhaps on the basis that we have polling data that can be broken down by these categories? As for Income, education, and employment status -- how are these any less group characteristics than personal characteristics? My basis for saying that these are important characteristics was simply that they are correlated with voting a certain way. Certainly income, education, etc. can be used as a classification for a group, but these characteristics would seem to be more highly correlated with an individual's utility level than race or gender (at least under the normal assumptions economists make), and that is the basis for the differentiation here. If you show me evidence that people vote on the size of a gov't transfer based on current income, that might be a sign of self interested voting or group voting, but if you show me that people vote on this transfer based on gender, I'd cite that as evidence for group-interest voting. All you seem to have found is that people's votes are not easily changed by changes in their fortunes -- in other words, if you believe X while you are poor and/or unemployed, you tend to still believe X after you get a job and get rich. Why is that surprising? Do you think people should always vote based on their current short-term self-interest, without regard to what situations they may otherwise find, or have found themselves in, let alone what they might believe is right morally? What counterfactual are you imagining here? I don't expect people to vote only based on their current circumstances. The question here is whether the ideological distribution changes because of influences from policy- which might have short or long run effects on material consumption or some kind of moral value. If ideology is formed from characteristics such as religion, race, gender, it is hard for me to think of ways policy could influence ideology (immigration policy is one). It would surprise me if policy didn't influence the ideological distribution- i.e. the number of liberals/conservatives is purely a function of exogenous shifts in the demographics of the population. Jason DeBacker
Re: Krugman on Rep and Dem virtue
Those guys are Marginal Revolution already got to that Economist article: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/05/iq_hoax.html Also, I was thinking of an endogeneity problem here. If you are in a state with lots of marital and family value type problems, you are more likely to support the republican platform that claims to solve these. If you are in Massachusetts, you are less likely to know someone affected by these problems and thus have little reason to put much weight on that when choosing a candidate. Regards, Jason Quoting William Dickens [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Actually, the Economist ran an article a while back suggesting a strong correlation between the average IQ in a state and the fraction voting for Gore in 2000. Higher IQ people are more likely to marry and less likely to divorce. They are also less likely to have kids out of wedlock. Perhaps this explains what you are finding? - - Bill Dickens Jason DeBacker [EMAIL PROTECTED] 11/05/04 06:21PM This doesn't agree with my prior, but a quick search turned up this: http://www.divorcereform.org/94staterates.html Where 12 of the top 14 states in terms of low divorce rates were blue in 2000 and 2004 (with the exception of Iowa, this year)-- and 26 of the bottom 28 were red in 2000 and 2004 (with the exception of New Mexico). I don't know if it will explain away all the difference, but you can't get divorced unless you are married, and those that are married are more likely to be Republican. Also, if you have a child, you are more likely to be a Republican and if you have an out of wedlock birth, you have a child (and you didn't have an abortion). Older people are also more likely to be Republican, increasing the time and thus the chances of having a marital problem or a unexpected pregnancy, as long as the probability of either is not zero for Republicans. So the propensity of Democrats to get divorced or have an out of wedlock birth may be higher when you control for time married, age, and whether or not you have had a child. Both divorce and out of wedlock childern are correlated with low income, I'd guess. Does anyone know if Democrats have higher incomes that Republicans once you control for age, race, religion, etc? Regards, Jason
political economy and macroeconomics
What is the list's view of macro political economy models like those by Krusell, Rios-Rull, and others? Can these answer important political-economic questions well? I like the emphasis on theoretical models and the idea of matching moments that macro emphasizes. However, I am disappointed that none of the models of this type that I have seen include expressive voting or voter irrationality. Regards, Jason DeBacker
