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Patrick Egan New York University

“Don’t Just Stand There: Do Something!” Empirical Evidence for Policy Preferences that Violate Single- Peakedness with Implications for Social Choice. Patrick Egan New York University. Question : Under what conditions are policy preferences truly “single-peaked?”

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Patrick Egan New York University

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  1. “Don’t Just Stand There: Do Something!”Empirical Evidence for Policy Preferences that Violate Single-Peakednesswith Implications for Social Choice Patrick Egan New York University

  2. Question: Under what conditions are policy preferences truly “single-peaked?” Design: Ask respondents to rank their preferences over policies on four issues: Education The U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay Illegal immigration The nation’s reliance on foreign oil For each policy, respondents ranked preferences over the status quo (Q) and alternatives to its right (R) and left (L). Question and Design

  3. Results: ranked preferences

  4. Results: pairwise votes derived from rankings BothL and R are preferred to Q Q is preferred to both L and R Only issue on which aggregate ranked preferences correspond to aggregate marginals Cycling occurs

  5. Hypothesis: a heightened sense of the problem leads people to abandon a moderate status quo Challenge: assessments of problem seriousness are endogenous to policy preferences Experiment: randomly expose subjects to a reading passage and image that makes the problem more salient The treatment exogenously raises subjects’ assessment of problem seriousness on the issue. Result: On issues where the treatment successfully raised problem seriousness, the share of voters ranking the status quo last rose significantly. Identifying a mechanism

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