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In this paper I analyze the effect of transparency on decision making in committees. I focus on committees whose members are motivated by career concerns. The main result is that when the decision-making process is secretive (when individual votes are not revealed to the public), committee members comply with preexisting biases. For example, if the voting rule demands a supermajority to accept a reform, individuals vote more often against reforms. Transparent committees are therefore more likely to accept reforms. I also find that coupled with the right voting rule, a secretive procedure may induce better decisions than a transparent one. (JEL D71, D72)

The rise in populism in the Western world, most evident in the results of the 2016 Brexit referendum and the 2016 United States presidential election, has often been connected with the rise of social media. The unique character of social media has allowed extreme and polarised beliefs, two of the most identifiable features of populism, to emerge and spread in society through permitting the creation of echo chambers on a new larger scale, and providing new means for political campaigners and interested third parties to influence voter opinion. The abundance of information on social media might trigger voters to use simple heuristics to aggregate multiple sources of information. In this paper we report on several studies that focus on the implications of one such documented bias: "correlation neglect", the propensity to treat information sources as if they are (conditionally) independent. We discuss the relation between correlation neglect and polarisation in opinions and party platforms. We also discuss how targeted political campaigns in the presence of correlation neglect may bias voters from different groups in different directions. Specifically, competition in targeted social media campaigns increases polarisation among extreme voters but at the same time increases the randomness and unpredictability of moderates' voting behaviour. These findings are consistent with new data on the evolution of US voters' opinions in the last five decades. The data show a significant change in the trajectory of the opinions of moderates versus extreme voters starting from the mid 90s, which is consistent with the rise in the ability of campaigns more effectively to target and bombard voters with information through social media. Publisher's note: This article was edited on 04/04/2022 to include Funding Information that was omitted at the time of publication.

The rise in populism in the Western world, most evident in the results of the 2016 Brexit referendum and the 2016 United States presidential election, has often been connected with the rise of social media. The unique character of social media has allowed extreme and polarised beliefs, two of the most identifiable features of populism, to emerge and spread in society through permitting the creation of echo chambers on a new larger scale, and providing new means for political campaigners and interested third parties to influence voter opinion. The abundance of information on social media might trigger voters to use simple heuristics to aggregate multiple sources of information. In this paper we report on several studies that focus on the implications of one such documented bias: "correlation neglect", the propensity to treat information sources as if they are (conditionally) independent. We discuss the relation between correlation neglect and polarisation in opinions and party platforms. We also discuss how targeted political campaigns in the presence of correlation neglect may bias voters from different groups in different directions. Specifically, competition in targeted social media campaigns increases polarisation among extreme voters but at the same time increases the randomness and unpredictability of moderates' voting behaviour. These findings are consistent with new data on the evolution of US voters' opinions in the last five decades. The data show a significant change in the trajectory of the opinions of moderates versus extreme voters starting from the mid 90s, which is consistent with the rise in the ability of campaigns more effectively to target and bombard voters with information through social media.

In this paper we analyze elections when voters underestimate the correlation between their information sources ("correlation neglect"). We find that this cognitive bias can improve political outcomes. We show that the extreme beliefs which result from correlation neglect induce some voters to base their vote on information rather than on political preferences. We characterize conditions on the distribution of preferences under which this induces higher vote shares for the optimal policies and better information aggregation. (JEL D72, D83)

We develop a dynamic model of political competition between two groups that differ in their subjective model of the data generating process for a common outcome. One group has a simpler model than the other group as they ignore some relevant policy variables. We show that policy cycles must arise and that simple world views—which can be interpreted as populist world views—imply extreme policy choices. Periods in which those with a more complex model govern increase the specification error of the simpler world view, leading the latter to overestimate the positive impact of a few extreme policy actions. (JEL D72, D83, K42)

In this paper we study the effect of religiosity on the political choices over redistribution and over the legal restrictions on personal liberties. Religious teachings generally restrict individual behavior on issues such as consumption of some goods, sexual orientation, divorce, abortion, gay marriage, contraception and so on. We assume that the more religious an individual is, (i) the less he enjoys the use of liberties prohibited by his religion; and (ii) the higher the negative externality experienced when others in society practice those liberties beyond what he deems adequate. The first assumption implies that, when the law allows for the use of liberties, secular individuals have a higher incentive to work than religious ones. As a result, the political choice of legal restrictions on liberties has an impact on income inequality. The second implies that religious individuals may prefer to repress liberties in society. As repression of liberties reduces income inequality, poor religious individuals may still prefer low taxes compared with richer and less religious ones. We also analyze the choice of redistribution and the legal cap on liberties as the majoritarian outcome in a citizen-candidate model. We obtain that when the majority of the population is religious and the religious cleavage in society is large, high intolerance due to negative externalities leads to a political outcome consisting of repression of liberties and relatively low income taxes. ; Joan Esteban and Laura Mayoral gratefully acknowledge financial support ´ from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness Grant, through the Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres of Excellence in RD (SEV-2015-0563) and grant number ECO2015 − 66883−P, Generalitat de Catalunya project number 2017SGR1359, and the National Science Foundation grant SES-1629370 ; Peer reviewed

Presentado el 22 de mayo de 2014 en la Conference on Axioms, Results and Methods in Normative Economics, celebrada del 22 al 24 de mayo de 2014 en Granada (España). Presentado el 9 de junio de 2014 en el International Economic Association 17th World Congress, celebrado del 6 al 10 de juni de 2014 en el Dead Sea (Jordania). Presentado como conferencia en el Department of Economics, Università di Bologna. Presentado como conferencia en el Departamento de Fundamentos de Análisis Económico de la Universidad de Alicante el 31 de octubre de 2014. Presentado como conferencia el 2 de diciembre de 2015 en el Economics & Political Science (EPS) Seminars de INSEAD, The Business School for the World. ; In this paper we study the role of religiosity in political choices such as redistribution and individual liberties. To a standard model with consumption and effort, we add a third good: civil liberties with a cap established by law. More liberties, like divorce, abortion, gender parity, or gay marriage, may be considered good by the secular and detrimental by the religious individuals. With standard assumptions on individual preferences, one obtains that wider liberties increase the marginal utility of consumption to seculars, and decrease it to religious individuals. Labor supply and income are therefore lower for religious individuals in the presence of liberties. This implies a higher share of religious agents among the poor consistent with evidence that the poor care more about "moral values". We analyze the preferences of individuals over taxation and the legal cap over liberties. We show that restriction of liberties can arise as an equilibrium outcome of a simple political process when society is sufficiently religious. Moreover, if economic polarisation is lower than religious polarisation, restriction of liberties results in lower taxation. Thus more religious societies will impose lower taxation both because (i) their productivity is lower, (ii) repression of liberties is more likely to arise and result in lower taxes ; Joan Esteban and Laura Mayoral gratefully acknowledge financial support from the AXA Research Fund, the Generalitat de Catalunya, and the CICYT (ECO2011-25293) ; Peer Reviewed