Research

Publications:

Policy Feedback and Voter Turnout: Evidence from the Finnish Basic Income Experiment. with Salomo Hirvonen and Janne Tukiainen. Conditionally Accepted. American Journal of Political Science. Link

In many democracies, unemployed and low-income citizens are less willing to vote. Can social policies weaken the link between income and turnout? We study policy feedback leveraging a unique experiment in Finland, which randomly assigned a sizable group of unemployed to receiving an unconditional basic income for two years (2017-19). Combining individual-level registry and survey data, we show that the intervention has large positive effects on voter turnout. Unconditional basic income increases turnout in municipal elections by about 3 p.p., on average, an effect that is concentrated among marginal voters (+ 6-8 p.p.) and persists in national elections after the end of the experiment. Exploring possible mechanisms, our analysis highlights the role of the interpretive effects that follow from unconditionality in the bureaucratic process, including higher levels of political trust and efficacy. We discuss implications for theories of voter turnout and policy feedback, and the design of basic income policies.

Making Unequal Democracy Work? The Effects of Income on Voter Turnout in Northern Italy. with Giorgio Bellettini, Carlotta Berti Ceroni, and Enrico Cantoni. American Journal of Political Science.  Link. 

In many democracies, voter turnout is higher among the rich than the poor. But do changes in income lead to changes in electoral participation? We address this question with unique administrative data matching a decade of individual tax records with voter rolls in a large municipality in northern Italy. We document several important findings. First, levels of income and turnout both dropped disproportionately among relatively poor citizens following the Great Recession. Second, we show that the effects of within-individual changes in income are modest on average, but can significantly impact participation among the poor. Third, we find that declining turnout of voters facing economic insecurity has exacerbated the income skew in electoral participation. This provides suggestive evidence that income inequality and turnout inequality may reinforce each other. We discuss the theoretical implications of these results, set in a context with strong civic traditions and low barriers to voting.

When Time is of the Essence: A Natural Experiment on How Time Constraints Influence Elections. with John Holbein. Journal of Politics.  Link.

Abstract: Foundational theories of voter turnout suggest that many people don’t vote because they don’t have enough time. However, we possess little causal evidence about how time-based inputs affect electoral behavior. In this article, we employ a novel geographic regression discontinuity design that leverages U.S. time zone boundaries, and show that exogenous shifts in time allocations have significant political consequences. Namely, we find that all-else-equal citizens are less likely to vote if they live on the eastern side of the border. Time zones also appear to exacerbate participatory inequality and push election results towards Republicans. Exploring potential mechanisms, we find suggestive evidence that these effects are downstream consequences of insufficient sleep and are moderated by the convenience of voting. Regardless of the exact mechanisms, our results indicate that plausibly exogenous disruptions in daily schedules make it more difficult to find time to vote and significantly affect the composition of the electorate.

Insufficient Sleep Reduces Voting and Other Prosocial Behaviors. with John Holbein and David Dickinson. Nature Human Behaviour. Link. 

Abstract: Insufficient sleep is a growing public health concern in industrial societies. While a lack of sleep is known to negatively affect private behaviors—like working or going to school—comparatively little is known about its consequences for the social behaviors that hold society and democracy together. Using three complementary methods, here we show how insufficient sleep affects various measures of civic participation. With survey data from two countries, we show that insufficient sleep predicts lower voter turnout. Next, with a geographic regression discontinuity design we demonstrate that U.S. individuals who tend to sleep less due to circadian impacts of time-zone boundaries are also less likely to vote. Finally, we experimentally manipulate short-term sleep over a two-stage study. We observe that the treatment decreases levels of civic engagement as comprised by their willingness to vote, sign petitions, and donate to charities. These results highlight the strong negative consequences that current levels of insufficient sleep have on vitally important measures of social capital.

Modern Family? The Gendered Effects of Marriage and Childbearing on Voter Turnout with Giorgio Bellettini, Carlotta Berti Ceroni, Enrico Cantoni, and Chiara Monfardini. British Journal of Political Science.  Link. 

In many democracies, gender differences in voter turnout have narrowed or even reversed, on average. Yet, it appears that women participate more in some circumstances, and men in others. Here we study how life trajectories–specifically, marriage and having children–will impact men’s and women’s turnout differently depending on household-level context. To this end, we leverage a unique administrative panel dataset from Italy, an established democracy where traditional family structures remain important. Our within-individual estimates show that marriage increases men’s participation to women’s higher pre-marital levels, particularly so in low-income families. We also find that infants depress maternal turnout, especially among more traditional families, whereas primary school children stimulate paternal turnout. Exploring aggregate-level consequences, we show that demographic trends in marriage and fertility have contributed to recent shifts in the gender composition of the electorate. Together, our results highlight the importance of the family as a variable in political analyses.

Delayed Gratification in Political Participation. American Politics Research. Link. 

Abstract: Delayed gratification is associated with myriad desirable outcomes — like eating right and saving money. In this article, I explore whether it also increases political participation. To this end, I provide an explicit decision-theoretic framework, which predicts that less patient individuals are less willing to vote and to donate; these forms of participation are costly before Election Day, but their rewards are partially delayed. I then discuss how to elicit individual time preferences with real monetary incentives. In the empirical analysis, I provide evidence from a representative U.S. survey showing that monetary discount rates predict turnout and donations. Though mostly correlational and exploratory, these findings hold when controlling for a host of potential confounds. Overall, my results indicate that impatient types are less likely to prepare for and ultimately participate in elections. This sheds light on when and how deep psychological traits constrain political decisions involving a trade-off over time.

Turnout in Concurrent Elections: Evidence from Two Quasi-Experiments in Italy. with Enrico Cantoni and Ludovica Gazze. European Journal of Political Economy. Link. 

We study the effects of different types of concurrent elections using individual-level administrative and survey data from Italy. Exploiting different voting ages for the two Houses of Parliament in a voter-level Regression Discontinuity Design, we find no effect of Senate voting eligibility on voter turnout or information acquisition. We also estimate city-level Differences-in- Differences showing that concurrent high-salience municipal elections increase turnout in lower-salience provincial and European elections, but not vice-versa. Moreover, concurrency effects are concentrated in municipalities in the South of Italy with weaker political parties and lower levels of social capital.

European Commission Officials’ Policy Attitudes. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 52(4), 911-927. Link.

European Commission officials are usually thought to prefer more to less supranational authority. A large body of work assumes that they maximize the power of their organization. This study suspends a priori preference attribution and empirically investigates variation in support for supranational authority over five policy areas. The analysis uses Kassim et al.’s survey data from 2008 (N = 1,901). The first finding in this paper is that Commission officials do not systematically prefer more supranational decision-making. Following the logic of fiscal federalism, they support changes in EU policy scope to the extent that this would improve public good provision. The second finding, taking a political psychology perspective, is that individual calculations of efficiency are mediated by ideological beliefs. Because issues are complex and information is costly, Commission officials rely on heuristics to assess what the European Union should do. They are biased information-processors.