Original title: A model of focusing in political choice
Authors: Nunnari, S. ; Zápal, Jan
Document type: Research reports
Year: 2017
Language: eng
Series: CERGE-EI Working Paper Series, volume: 587
Abstract: This paper develops a theoretical model of voters’ and politicians’ behavior based on the notion that voters focus disproportionately on, and hence overweight, certain attributes of policies. We assume that policies have two attributes and that voters focus more on the attribute in which their options differ more. First, we consider exogenous policies and show that voters’ focusing polarizes the electorate. Second, we consider the endogenous supply of policies by office-motivated politicians\nwho take voters’ distorted focus into account. We show that focusing leads to inefficient policies, which cater excessively to a subset of voters: social groups that are larger, have more distorted focus, are more moderate, and are more sensitive to changes in a single attribute are more influential. Finally, we show that augmenting the classical models of voting and electoral competition with focusing can contribute to explain puzzling stylized facts as the inverse correlation between income inequality and redistribution or the backlash effect of extreme policies.
Keywords: attention; focus; salience

Institution: Economics Institute AS ČR (web)
Document availability information: Fulltext is available at external website.
External URL: http://www.cerge-ei.cz/pdf/wp/Wp587.pdf
Original record: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0272635

Permalink: http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-356975


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