NES Center for the Study of Diversity and Social Interactions and HSE International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development are happy to invite you to our joint meeting of the Research Seminar on Diversity and Development and HSE Seminar on Political Economy.

James Tremewan (University of Auckland) will present the paper "Ambiguous Policies and Correlated Preferences" (co-authored by Juha Tolvanen and Alexander Wagner). 

Abstract:

There are many popular accounts of candidates winning elections with markedly ambiguous platforms. Clear empirical evidence regarding ambiguous platforms, as well as the reasons for their attractiveness, is however quite limited. We test a novel mechanism that explains the success of ambiguous platforms in an equilibrium model with fully rational players. In a citizen-candidate model of electoral competition, we show that if policy preferences are correlated in a society, this correlation can lead candidates to run on ambiguous platforms and voters to support them. In a laboratory experiment, we show that when voters' and candidates' preferences are correlated, ambiguous platforms gain notable support and can even win elections. Moreover, leveraging on the heterogeneity of cognitive ability of players in the game, we provide direct support for the underlying mechanism which drives the use and support of ambiguous platforms.

Registration: till noon on January 28.