Mass media plays a crucial role in information distribution and thus in the political market and public policy making. Theory predicts that information provided by mass media reflects the media's incentives to provide news to different types of groups in society, and affects these groups'...

To explore the propagation of populist extremism across countries, we construct a multi-country model wherein each country's politician sequentially implements a policy. Voters learn the incumbent politician's type and the desirable policy by observing foreign policies on top of the domestic...

What is the role of international migrants and, specifically, migrant networks in shaping political attitudes and behavior in migrant sending countries? Our theoretical framework proposes that migration might change individual social identities and thus stimulate intrinsic motivation for...

To explore the propagation of undesirable policies in a form of populist extremism, we construct a social learning model featuring agency problems. Politicians in different countries sequentially implement a policy. Voters learn the incumbent politician's type and the desirable policy by...

This paper provides new empirical evidence on policy-makers' voting patterns on interest rates. Applying (pooled) Taylor-type rules and using real-time information available from published inflation reports and voting records, the paper tests for heterogeneity among committee members in three...

Laboratory evidence shows that when people have to argue for a given position, they persuade themselves about the position’s factual and moral superiority. Such self-persuasion limits the potential of communication to resolve conflict and reduce polarization. We test for this phenomenon in a...

The regularity with which peace deals break down and civil wars resume is well established. This briefing looks at the factors that drive violent conflicts, and the factors that may undermine peace deals, including those brokered and supported by international third parties. For peace to last,...

Support for economic reforms has often shown puzzling dynamics: many reforms that started off successfully, lost public support nevertheless. We show that learning dynamics can rationalize this paradox, the reason being that the process of revealing reform outcomes is an example of sampling...

To study how different economic information affect people's perceptions and attitudes towards carbon prices, we conduct an online survey experiment in a representative sample of the German voting population. We find that providing information about the efficiency of carbon prices as well as on...

To study how different economic information affect people's perceptions and attitudes towards carbon prices, we conduct an online survey experiment in a representative sample of the German voting population. We find that providing information about the efficiency of carbon prices as well as on...