Political Economy Workshop (Gov 3007)

First, Laura Trucco will lead a 30-minute brainstorming about her research proposal "Fixing Broken Windows: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial in Buenos Aires." Second, Carlos Lastra Anadón will lead a 30-minute brainstorming about his research proposal "Size of jurisdictions, distance from the citizens and government effectiveness." Third, Dustin Tingley present his paper (with Matto Mildenberger) "Beliefs about Climate Beliefs: Second-Order Opinions in the Climate Domain." They wanted to include this disclaimer: "We are a 'last minute fill in' and this is a very new paper. Please keep this in mind while reading. We were unable to find a discussant. If you want to be our discussant, please email Dustin. If you want to be our interruptant, I look forward to your attendance." Abstract for "Fixing Broken Windows: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial in Buenos Aires" Citizens’ participation is widely regarded to be an important determinant of government representativeness and effectiveness (World Development Report 2004). A significant challenge for effective government provision is the low level of citizen participation, especially among poor and underserved populations. In this project, I investigate how government work feeds back into participation. In particular, I focus on citizens' complaints about the public space (street, sidewalks, streetlights, etc) in the City of Buenos Aires. I will launch soon the experiment in the field, and I am looking forward to obtaining feedback on its design. Abstract for "Size of jurisdictions, distance from the citizens and government effectiveness" Who should make decisions about the delivery of public services? How far removed should they be from the front line and from the average citizen receiving the service? Using a combination of US datasets on school districts and outcomes of schools, I seek to establish and explain the relation between school district enrollment size and geographical size and district outcomes. I hypothesize that geographical size has an independent effect on outcomes, distinct from enrollment levels. Further, this effect is largely through differential accountability mechanisms in large vs smaller districts. This is consistent with a theory where enrollment levels lead to economies of scale in the delivery of public education services but there is a tradeoff between the benefits of large enrollment numbers and the detrimental effects of increased geographical size. Abstract for "Beliefs about Climate Beliefs: Second-Order Opinions in the Climate Domain." Existing work on public opinion about climate opinion predominantly focuses on average levels of support for different climate related questions, and what explains variation in this support. However, we know very little about ‘second-order’ climate opinions: indi- vidual beliefs about the climate beliefs of others. This article unpacks the distribution and content of these second-order climate opinions among the US public. We find that the general public underestimates population-level belief in climate change, believing that the public is more divided over the existence of climate change than is true in reality. Fur- ther, individual perceptions of the climate beliefs of others are egocentrically biased, with climate change disbelievers reporting systematically lower estimates of the distribution of population-level climate beliefs. We also find significant biases in second-order climate beliefs as we experimentally vary, first, the partisan affiliation and, second, the national identity of a reference population. We also confirm a similar bias in a nationally represen- tative survey of the Chinese public. However, we do not find significant differences in the rationales that Americans attribute to others, regardless of their personal climate beliefs. We conjecture how our results speak to prospects for collective action on climate change.