Author:
SHEFFER LIOR,LOEWEN PETER JOHN,SOROKA STUART,WALGRAVE STEFAAN,SHEAFER TAMIR
Abstract
A considerable body of work in political science is built upon the assumption that politicians are more purposive, strategic decision makers than the citizens who elect them. At the same time, other work suggests that the personality profiles of office seekers and the environment they operate in systematically amplifies certain choice anomalies. These contrasting perspectives persist absent direct evidence on the reasoning characteristics of representatives. We address this gap by administering experimental decision tasks to incumbents in Belgium, Canada, and Israel. We demonstrate that politicians are as or more subject to common choice anomalies when compared to nonpoliticians: they exhibit a stronger tendency to escalate commitment when facing sunk costs, they adhere more to policy choices that are presented as the status-quo, their risk calculus is strongly subject to framing effects, and they exhibit distinct future time discounting preferences. This has obvious implications for our understanding of decision making by elected politicians.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Subject
Political Science and International Relations,Sociology and Political Science
Reference155 articles.
1. Resistance to Reform: Status Quo Bias in the Presence of Individual-Specific Uncertainty;Fernandez;The American Economic Review,1991
2. Preference Formation
3. Statistical Critiques of the Democratic Peace: Caveat Emptor
4. Status quo framing increases support for torture
5. Framing Theory
Cited by
138 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献