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A recent Public Opinion Quarterly article argued that men whose first children were girls rather than boys—daughters rather than sons—were more likely to support gender-equality policies. This note reexamines the coding and model specification of that analysis, focusing on the definition of "first daughters" and on the inclusion, perilously for causal inference, of control variables that are more probably consequences than causes of the independent variable of interest. In the tested alternative specifications, the predicted effect of first-child sex diminishes, usually falling short of standard benchmarks for statistical significance.

The European Union's deepening of international economic integration might be expected to correspondingly increase interest in policy (and news) related to trade partners. The United Kingdom's withdrawal from the organization through invocation of Article 50 offers a particularly clear case for such potential effects, since it directly implicates the relevant economic ties. Yet, evidence from Google searches shows no such effect: European regions that particularly rely on trade with the United Kingdom devote no greater share of their search requests to Brexit-related topics, whether because the public is unaware of local trade linkages or uninterested in the other parties involved.

ObjectiveEstablishing what leads people to particular moral beliefs is complicated by potential predictors being themselves caused by moral attitudes. This problem is less acute when considering the effects of good looks, which, by expanding sexual opportunities, shift incentives for beliefs regarding the morality of sexual activities.MethodsRegressions predict responses to morality‐related questions in the 2016 General Social Survey and the 1972 National Election Study, which included interviewer (i.e., not self‐generated) evaluations of respondents' looks. These questions concern various actions' moral acceptability regardless of legality, as well as policy positions on issues including gay marriage and marijuana legalization.ResultsBetter‐looking respondents give more morally permissive responses to most questions relating to sex. For issues not directly related to sexual opportunities, however, attractiveness does not predict significantly more acceptant attitudes.ConclusionGood‐looking people generally are more acceptant of those indulgences that they have disproportionate opportunities for, highlighting the role of opportunism in the formation of moral and political attitudes.

AbstractResearch on mass opinion in international political economy overwhelmingly relies on survey data. This poses problems of external validity, especially for a frequently low-salience issue such as trade policy. To examine whether survey findings about attitudes toward economic openness apply outside of surveys, this note considers patterns of voting in the 2007 Costa Rican plebiscite about joining the Central American Free Trade Area. Several extant theories appear to explain voting patterns, but the results are less in line with traditional economic models based on locally important economic sectors.

Individuals with access to multiple jurisdictions can choose to distribute their consumption of many government policies across various polities to avoid costs imposed by their own government. This alters preferences over their own governments policies, suggesting such voters should disproportionately favor policies whose costs are evadable. Referendum voting from the Switzerland and the United States confirms this theorizing: border areas, where the populations have systematically greater access to other jurisdictions, see significantly different levels of support for a variety of policy measures, including abortion policy, legal retirement age, and sales tax rates. Adapted from the source document.