Extreme Weather Events and Climate Attitudes, with Lawrence Rothenberg

Abstract: Extreme weather events are the primary way in which most humans experience climate change (US Global Change Research Program, 2014). We study whether witnessing climate change itself — through experiencing changes in extreme weather events (EWEs) — during the 2012-2022 period increased people’s support for climate change mitigating policies. We find that the American public did not respond or they responded only selectively to EWEs, and that response is observed only in more recent years. Specifically, before 2019, EWEs had not seemed to matter. Since 2019, however, of the four groups we study – Democrats and Republicans with and without college education – only college-educated Democrats increased their support for mitigation policies after experiencing positive shocks in damage from high-temperature events (in particular, droughts and wildfires), and they responded to shocks from these events only. That hurricanes and floods account for 94% of damage to a typical US county from climate change related EWEs but no group responded to them suggests that political actors seeking to increase public support for climate change mitigation policies should emphasize the link between these events and climate change. Additionally, contrary to previous research that typically find only short-term effect of EWEs, we find that shocks in some events can have effects lasting for five years.

Effect of Primary Election Rules on Politicians’ Rhetorical Extremism

Abstract: When primary elections are closed, in the months leading up to primary elections, candidates for political office may use ideologically more extreme rhetoric to compete for the votes of their co-partisan voters. Previous studies of the relationship between primary election rule and politicians’ rhetorical extremism have examined only one Congressional election, thus not controlling for the political environment, or analyzed only two presidential elections and thereby limited by the number of candidates. This research improves the literature by studying more than 14 years of complete data and using a causal inference framework. Using fine-tuned large language models and a differences-in-differences approach with synthetic controls, I exploit changes in some states’ primary election laws to study if laws mandating more inclusive primary elections reduced the level of extremism in US House Members’ tweets. While non-partisan primary elections are the most inclusive ones possible, I find no evidence that mandating non-partisan primary elections led to moderation among five affected state-party US House delegations. However, I find evidence that requiring primary elections to be open to unaffiliated voters led to some moderation in one of the two affected state-party delegations.

Climate Change Adaptation Policy Making and Politicians’ Climate Attitudes

Abstract: What explains politicians’ climate attitudes? This research studies the role of local climate change adaptation policy making on views about climate change held by politicians in the US Atlantic and Gulf coastal regions. Using complete sets of congressional tweets and medium-and-large cities' directly elected mayors’ tweets, several fine-tuned large language models, and a measure of city governments’ flood adaptation effort, I find evidence that city governments' flood adaptation effort reduced nearby cities' mayors’ expressed belief in climate change science and reduced their expressed support for climate change mitigation policies; this evidence is consistent with an income effect. On the contrary, local governments’ flood adaptation effort led to increases both in the representing US House Members’ expressed belief in climate change science and in their support for climate change mitigation policies, while briefly reduced their expressed opposition to these policies. Additionally, this research contributes to the literature on federalism by providing widespread evidence that politicians' expressed view on an issue can be greatly associated with the office that they hold. Specifically, when the analysis is restricted to overlapping purely urban, or also urban-suburban, or also dense suburban congressional districts and cities, a congressman is, in every case, more than 140 times as likely as a mayor to express doubt about climate change science, but only 2-4 times as likely to express belief in it.