Research

This paper studies how shocks to socioeconomic expectations induced by elections contribute to democratic discontent in polarized societies. Using new large-scale survey data collected throughout the 2022 Brazilian presidential election, I investigate how respondents' electoral and socioeconomic expectations, polarization, emotions, and attitudes towards violence and democracy evolved as a result of the close victory of the main opposition candidate. My analysis is guided by a stylized model, in which I show that highly polarized voters who assign a large probability to their candidate's victory experience a larger negative shock to their socioeconomic expectations in case their candidate loses. This expectation shock may then lead to an increase in violent and anti-democratic sentiments. By resurveying 1,200 respondents right after the election, I confirm the model's predictions and show how the role of this negative expectation shock is particularly strong among the most extreme supporters. In an additional survey experiment, I provide complimentary evidence in which I positively update respondents' expectations about the economy and find that this information treatment reduces their violent and anti-democratic sentiments.

Using new survey and experimental data, this paper investigates how salience and partisanship shape voters’ willingness to support corrupt politicians. I conduct a large-scale online survey experiment in the United States in which respondents evaluate hypothetical candidates varying in competence, corruption, and political affiliation. In the absence of party cues, voters respond to the relative salience of candidate traits. When corruption is perceived as widespread, com- petence becomes the salient characteristic, leading to an increase in support for the competent candidate, even if they are the most corrupt one. However, once political affiliation is introduced, it strongly overrides other traits: voters overwhelmingly prefer co-partisan candidates, regardless of their competence or honesty. A salience treatment mimicking increased media exposure to corruption reinforces these patterns by normalizing corruption and increasing support for com- petent but corrupt politicians. Open-ended responses show voters tend to ignore party loyalty as the reason behind their choice, favoring a rationalization of why competence, or honesty, is the most important characteristic. These findings highlight behavioral mechanisms behind the persistence of corruption, particularly in highly polarized contexts.

This paper studies how beliefs about racial inequalities and their causes vary and shape support for race-targeted and redistribution policies among Black and white Americans, including both adults and teenagers. We collect original large-scale survey data to provide new evidence on perceptions, attitudes, and policy views on racial issues and study the causal impact of information on policy views. We highlight significant heterogeneity along racial and partisan lines in perceived racial gaps in income and mobility. Yet, the biggest discrepancies are in how people explain the existence of these gaps, i.e., their perceived causes. White Democratic and Black respondents are much more likely to attribute racial inequities to systemic factors, such as adverse past and present circumstances, and want to act on them with race-targeted and general redistribution policies. White Republicans are more likely to attribute racial gaps to individual-based factors, such as individual effort or actions. These views are already deeply entrenched in teenagers, based on their race and their parents’ political affiliation. A policy decomposition shows that the perceived causes of racial inequities are the strongest predictors of support for race-targeted or redistribution policies, a finding confirmed by the experimental results.

To understand the paucity of forceful anti-corruption policies, we study legislator and citizen beliefs and preferences about corruption in three countries. Deploying parallel surveys in Colombia, Italy, and Pakistan, we investigate support for a political agency theory that sees politicians as rent-seekers and for an information theory under which politicians misperceive voter preferences. We find limited support for either. Using vignettes that invoke tradeoffs that could result in corruption, we find that citizens and politicians in all three countries perceive corruption as common and are equally likely to condemn it. Politicians’ understanding of citizens’ concerns are largely accurate, and an information treatment informing legislators of citizens’ preferences leads legislators to believe citizens are less concerned about corruption, since the treatment primarily impacts those who initially overestimated citizen concerns. Our evidence suggests that feeble anti-corruption policy agendas may persist because established political parties lack electoral incentives to prioritize fighting corruption.