Analyses of self-reported-well-being (SWB) survey data may be confounded if people use response scales differently. We use calibration questions, designed to have the same objective answer across respondents, to measure dimensional (i.e., specific to an SWB dimension) and general (i.e., common...

What should researchers consider when designing experiments that (also) collect self-reported well-being (SWB) data? Focusing on experiments in economics, we examine the motivation behind SWB-data collection, survey leading past examples, and highlight potential pitfalls and their proposed...

We study whether anger fuels the rise of populism. Anger as an emotion tends to act as a call to action against individuals or groups that are blamed for negative situations, making it conducive to voting for populist politicians. Using a unique dataset tracking emotions for a large sample of...

This paper asks whether history should change the way in which economists and economic historians think about populism. We use Müller's definition, according to which populism is 'an exclusionary form of identity politics, which is why it poses a threat to democracy'. We make three historical...

We conduct a survey experiment with a large, politically representative sample of U.S. consumers (5,205 participants) to study how perceptions of the U.S. Federal Reserve's (Fed) political stance shape macroeconomic expectations and trust in the Fed. The public is divided on the Fed's political...

We study how beliefs about firm value respond to public information stemming from either public announcements or shareholder meetings. We focus on settings with homogeneous shareholders (i.e., agents with common preferences and opinions), where information is about which course of action is best...

We propose a general equilibrium model where two special interest groups (SIGs) compete to influence public opinion. Citizens with heterogeneous priors over a binary state of the world receive reports drawn from a continuous message space by a variety of sources. The two opposite SIGs attempt to...

We analyze a model of political competition in which the elite forms endogenously to aggregate information and advise the uninformed median voter which candidate to choose. The median voter knows whether or not the endorsed candidate is biased toward the elites, but might still prefer the biased...

Many, if not most, personalistic dictatorships end up with a disastrous decision such as Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union, Hirohito's government launching a war against the United States, or Putin's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Even if the decision is not ultimately fatal for the...

The FDA is responsible for the approval of new drugs, biological products and medical devices in the United States. As part of the approval process, the FDA relies on advisory committees, which provide independent advice from outside experts. We combine a structural approach with newly collected...