Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1994, Vol 39(2), 225. Reviews the book, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion by John Zaller (1992). The author's commendable effort to specify a model of mass opinion formation offers readers an introduction to the prevailing vi

The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.

Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age

THE MYTH OF THE RATIONAL VOTER: WHY DEMOCRACIES CHOOSE BAD POLICIES BY BRYAN CAPLAN PRINCETON, NJ: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2007 Democracy supposedly protects citizenries from "harmful" policies, but in fact produces and entrenches them Bryan Caplan explores the failures of democracy which he believes is primarily because voters are worse than ignorant, they are irrational and thus their voting patterns reveal systematic error Caplan believes that he has "robust empirical evidence" of systematic error in the form of evidence derived via econometric method applied to data collected by the 1996 Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy (SAEE) First, let us review the facts of the survey, then examine the statistical method used SAEE surveyed 250 economics PhDs and more than 1,500 members of the American public on 37 items in 4 categories The first two categories consist of 18 items about whether various factors constitute a major factor, a minor factor, or no factor at all as to why the economy is not performing better than it is The third category consists of 7 questions asking whether certain trends or policies are good, bad, or indifferent for the economy The final category consists of 12 questions touching on various issues The statistical method applied to SAEE's data is that of "enlightened preferences" Enlightened preferences are political preferences voters would have if they were much more informed about political issues The method consists of the following First, a survey of policy preferences is given along with a test of political knowledge Second, policy preferences are estimated as a function of political knowledge and demographic-profile factors (eg, age, race, sex, income, etc) Third, the preferences of all demographic categories are extrapolated, assuming that all of their members acquired the highest level of political knowledge (p 25)1 The SAEE data reveal that economists are not as concerned about the US level of tax rates or deficits as the public is Answers to the first category of questions lie along a two-point scale where 2 designates a "major reason" the economy is not performing better, 1 a "minor reason" why the economy is not performing better, and 0 "not a reason at all" why the economy is not performing better Survey item one states, "Taxes are too high" The public average is 15 while the economists average is 077 Caplan's enlightened public scores a 099 So far, so good Item two states, "The federal deficit is too big" The public registers a 173, while economists score a 114 Caplan's enlightened public scores a 116 Again, so far, so good Unfortunately, one rather unpleasant aspect of econometrics is how results can seem to fall so nicely in your favor until they suddenly do not Item six is, "Education and job training are inadequate" The public scores a 156 and economists a 161 Caplan's enlightened public scores a 164 Not good, since it supposedly consists of a normal US public with unchanged demographics but all members being given the equivalent of an economics PhD2 What seems theoretically plausible is that the enlightened public should move from the public position to more toward where economists are scoring, ceteris paribus For the enlightened public to exactly achieve or exceed the economists score seems farfetched to say the least Caplan fails to address this odd result In his analysis of item six, he only discusses education, yet the wording of the item includes job training (see above) (p 60) Obviously job training is a form of education, but there is a legitimate question of whether a distinction could have existed in the minds of SAEE's respondents (eg, cosmetology school versus a liberal arts degree) It is eminently reasonable to believe that different connotations and the reference to job training positioned toward the end of the item statement could have skewed responses to the item …

The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies

Subjective perceptions of inequality can substantially influence policy attitudes, public health metrics, and societal well-being, but the lack of consensus in the scientific community on how to best operationalize and measure these perceptions may impede progress on the topic. Here, we provide a theoretical framework for the study of subjective perceptions of inequality, which brings critical differences to light. This framework—which we conceptualize as a series of four guiding questions for studying subjective perceptions of economic inequality—serves as a blueprint for the theoretical and empirical decisions researchers need to address in the study of when, how, and why subjective perceptions of inequality are consequential for individuals, groups, and societies. To lay the foundation for a comprehensive approach to the topic, we offer four theoretical and empirical decisions in studying subjective perceptions of inequality, urging researchers to specify: (1) What kind of inequality? (2) What level of analysis? (3) What part of the distribution? and (4) What comparison group? We subsequently discuss how this framework can be used to organize existing research and highlight its utility in guiding future research across the social sciences in both the theory and measurement of subjective perceptions of inequality. 

/pdf/inequality-in-researchers-minds-four-guiding-questions-for-3f4ysprq.pdf

Inequality in researchers’ minds: Four guiding questions for studying subjective perceptions of economic inequality

In a dynamically changing socio-economic environment with significant technical and technological progress, the notion of energy security takes on a new, broader meaning. Modern literature presents a variety of operational definitions of energy security. Most authors dealing with the issue of energy security expose its different aspects while standing in opposition to competing concepts. As a result, literature that addresses the problems of energy policy is becoming a platform for debates on the essence of energy security and the applicability of its various approaches to individual situations. There is no unanimity among authors with regard to the theoretical framework or the components of this notion. However, the issue of diversity of views is quite typical in social sciences and should not be taken negatively. Despite this, and perhaps contrary to the definitional wealth, experts in the field of energy policy constantly stress the necessity and urgency of undertaking work on the conceptualization of energy security. The aim of the article is a comprehensive review of the concept of energy security in the context of new trends in the development of the energy sector based on a narrative review of scientific literature. The main differences in the perception of energy security have been identified, and it has been pointed out that the “supply concept” of energy security is giving way to an approach in which energy is a factor initiating deep transformations of social systems by changing consumption patterns, reducing energy consumption, and forcing changes in economic systems by imposing energy efficiency standards and environmental standards.

/pdf/energy-security-a-conceptual-overview-2e2tekqz.pdf

Energy Security: A Conceptual Overview

/pdf/a-network-based-explanation-of-inequality-perceptions-1hvrkgc5.pdf

A network-based explanation of inequality perceptions

With the advent of platform economies and the increasing availability of online price comparisons, many empirical markets now select on relative rather than absolute performance. This feature might give rise to the ‘winner takes all/most’ phenomenon, where tiny initial productivity differences amount to large differences in market shares. We study the effect of heterogeneous initial productivities arising from locally segregated markets on aggregate outcomes, e.g., regarding revenue distributions. Several of those firm-level characteristics follow distributional regularities or ‘scaling laws’ (Brock in Ind Corp Change 8(3):409–446, 1999). Among the most prominent are Zipf’s law describing the largest firms‘ extremely concentrated size distribution and the robustly fat-tailed nature of firm size growth rates, indicating a high frequency of extreme growth events. Dosi et al. (Ind Corp Change 26(2):187–210, 2017b) recently proposed a model of evolutionary learning that can simultaneously explain many of these regularities. We propose a parsimonious extension to their model to examine the effect for deviations in market structure from global competition, implicitly assumed in Dosi et al. (2017b). This extension makes it possible to disentangle the effects of two modes of competition: the global competition for sales and the localised competition for market power, giving rise to industry-specific entry productivity. We find that the empirically well-established combination of ‘superstar firms’ and Zipf tail is consistent only with a knife-edge scenario in the neighbourhood of most intensive local competition. Our model also contests the conventional wisdom derived from a general equilibrium setting that maximum competition leads to minimum concentration of revenue (Silvestre in J Econ Lit 31(1):105–141, 1993). We find that most intensive local competition leads to the highest concentration, whilst the lowest concentration appears for a mild degree of (local) oligopoly. Paradoxically, a level playing field in initial conditions might induce extreme concentration in market outcomes.

/pdf/equal-chances-unequal-outcomes-network-based-evolutionary-s9ae5ug66x.pdf

Equal chances, unequal outcomes? : Network-based evolutionary learning and the industrial dynamics of superstar firms

Abstract Inequality perceptions differ along racial and gendered lines. To explain these disparities, we propose an agent-based model of localised perceptions of the gender and racial wage gap in networks. We show that the combination of homophilic graph formation and estimation based on locally limited knowledge can replicate both the underestimation of the gender or racial wage gap that empirical studies find and the well-documented fact that the underprivileged perceive the wage gap to be higher on average and with less bias. Similarly, we demonstrate that the underprivileged perceive overall inequality to be higher on average. In contrast to this qualitative replication, we also show that the effect of homophilic graph formation is quantitatively too strong to account for the empirically observed effect sizes within a recent Israeli sample on perceived gender wage gaps. As a parsimonious extension, we let agents estimate using a composite signal based on local and global information. Our calibration suggests that women place much more weight on the (correct) global signal than men, in line with psychological evidence that people adversely affected by group-based inequities pay more attention to global information about the issue. Our findings suggest that (educational) interventions about the global state of gender equality are much more likely to succeed than information treatments about overall inequality and that these interventions should target the privileged. 

/pdf/perception-and-privilege-3glmekju.pdf

Perception and privilege

A Network Approach to Expenditure Cascades

The doctoral thesis argues that such transfer of the structure of an Agent-Based-Model from one real world application to another is indeed possible by means of story adaptation to the new application case. If successful, the transfer benefits research in two ways: (I) It improves efficiency for modellers and readers alike; (II) it can reveal structural similarity between these cases and help to assess the extent of this structural similarity. Therefore, structure transfer is no mere auxiliary to Agent-Based Modelling but an independent scientific endeavour. However, such endeavour may also fail or mislead in the sense that an identified structural similarity between two modelled situations does not exist. Hence, model structure transfer requires a careful execution. 

One Model, Multiple Stories? Using Agent-Based Models to Unveil Structural Similarities in a Complex World

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