This paper provides a simple conceptual framework that captures how different perceptions, attitudes, and biases about immigrants or minorities can shape preferences for redistribution and reviews ...the empirical evidence on the effects of increasing racial diversity and immigration on support for redistribution.
We use a new dataset of the universe of Greek corporate tax returns to study a voluntary tax compliance program for small firms. This “self-assessment” program prescribed target taxable profit ...margins (the ratio of taxable profits to revenues) for different types of activities. Firms that reported profit margins above these targets in a given year were exempt from audits in that year. We find that the firms that take up the program report significantly larger taxable profits than non-eligible firms, with some evidence for longer-lasting effects on tax reporting. Firms that take up the program for more years exhibit stronger effects. We also find that firms can easily and substantially manipulate reported revenue (decreasing it by up to 40%) to help meet prescribed profit margins without paying more in taxes. Overall, the program increased tax revenues collected from small firms, but points to a very large level of baseline under-reporting of profits and the ease of manipulating reported revenues.
We illustrate the design and use of open-ended survey questions to elicit people's first-order concerns on policies. Closed-ended questions are the backbone of surveys but may prime respondents to ...select some answers and may omit relevant options. Open-ended questions that do not constrain respondents with specific answer choices are a valuable tool for eliciting first-order thinking. We discuss three text analysis methods to analyze open-ended questions' answers and apply them to surveys on income and estate taxation. People's key concerns relate mostly to distribution issues, fairness, and trust in government rather than to efficiency, and they exhibit large partisan gaps.
The Polarization of Reality Alesina, Alberto; Miano, Armando; Stantcheva, Stefanie
AEA papers and proceedings,
05/2020, Volume:
110
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Americans are polarized not only in their views on policy issues and attitudes toward government and society but also in their perceptions of the same factual reality. We conceptualize how to think ...about the “polarization of reality” and review recent papers that show that Republicans and Democrats view the same reality through a different lens. Perhaps as a result, they hold different views about policies and what should be done to address economic and social issues. We also show that providing information leads to different reassessments of reality and different responses along the policy support margin, depending on one’s political leaning.
Abstract
We link survey data on Danish people’s perceived income positions and fairness views on inequality within various reference groups to administrative records on their reference groups, income ...histories, and life events. People are, on average, well-informed about the income levels of their reference groups. Yet, lower-ranked respondents in all groups tend to overestimate their own position among others because they believe others’ incomes are lower than they actually are, whereas the opposite holds true for higher-ranked respondents. Misperceptions of positions in reference groups relate to proximity to other individuals, transparency norms, and visible signals of income. People view inequalities within their co-workers and education groups as significantly more unfair than overall inequality, yet underestimate inequality the most exactly within these groups. Views on the fairness of inequalities are strongly correlated with an individual’s current position, move with shocks like unemployment or promotions, and change when experimentally informing people about their actual positions. However, the higher perceived unfairness of income differences within co-workers and education groups stays unchanged. The theoretical framework shows that this can have important implications for redistribution policy.
Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis Alsan, Marcella; Braghieri, Luca; Eichmeyer, Sarah ...
American economic journal. Applied economics,
10/2023, Volume:
15, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We study people's willingness to trade off civil liberties for increased health security in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic by deploying representative surveys involving around 550,000 responses ...across 15 countries. We document significant heterogeneity across groups in willingness to sacrifice rights: citizens disadvantaged by income, education, or race are less willing to sacrifice rights than their more advantaged peers in every country. Leveraging naturally occurring variation and experimental approaches, we estimate a one standard deviation increase in health insecurity increases willingness to sacrifice civil liberties by 68–83 percent of the difference between the average Chinese and US citizen. (JEL D12, D91, I12, I18, K38, O17, P36)
Concerns have been raised about the “demise of democracy,” possibly accelerated by pandemic-related restrictions. Using a survey experiment involving 8,206 respondents from 5 Western democracies, we ...find that subjects randomly exposed to information regarding civil liberties infringements undertaken by China and South Korea to contain COVID-19 became less willing to sacrifice rights and more worried about their long-term erosion. However, our treatment did not increase support for democratic procedures more generally despite our prior evidence that pandemic-related health risks diminished such support. These results suggest that the start of the COVID-19 crisis was a particularly vulnerable time for democracies.
Surveys are an essential approach for eliciting otherwise invisible factors such as perceptions, knowledge and beliefs, attitudes, and reasoning. These factors are critical determinants of social, ...economic, and political outcomes. Surveys are not merely a research tool. They are also not only a way of collecting data. Instead, they involve creating the process that will generate the data. This allows the researcher to create their own identifying and controlled variation. Thanks to the rise of mobile technologies and platforms, surveys offer valuable opportunities to study either broadly representative samples or focus on specific groups. This paper offers guidance on the complete survey process, from the design of the questions and experiments to the recruitment of respondents and the collection of data to the analysis of survey responses. It covers issues related to the sampling process, selection and attrition, attention and carelessness, survey question design and measurement, response biases, and survey experiments.
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