PE Seminar

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences and IQSS sponsor this seminar on formal and quantitative political research. The Program on Political Economy (PE) supports research-related activities that integrate the study of economics and politics, whether by studying economic behavior in the political process or political behavior in the marketplace. In general, positive political economy is concerned with showing how observed differences among institutions affect political and economic outcomes in various social, economic, and political systems and how the institutions themselves change and develop in response to individual and collective beliefs, preferences, and strategies. All interested faculty and students are invited to attend.Georgy Egorov (Northwestern) presents, "From Extreme to Mainstream: How Social Norms Unravel” (with Leonardo Bursztyn and Stefano Fiorin).Abstract: Social norms, usually persistent, can unravel quickly when new public information arrives, such as a surprising election outcome. In our model of strategic communication, senders state their opinion but they can lie to pander to the popular view; receivers thus make less inference about such senders. We test the model's predictions with two experiments. On the sender's side, we show via revealed preference that Donald Trump's rise in popularity and eventual victory increased individuals' willingness to publicly express xenophobic views. On the receiver's side, we show that individuals are judged less negatively if they expressed a xenophobic view in an environment where the view is popular.