The Selection of the Political Class
The role of political parties in shaping political careers has rarely been studied, due to the lack of data. The challenge was taken up by Tommaso Nannicini (Department of Economics). A strand of his ERC-funded project Explaining Politicians' and Voters' Behavior, hosted by IGIER - Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research, is dedicated to the understanding of political career mechanisms. "The study of career trajectories and networks within political parties is a mean to estimate the quality of elected politicians and their policy decisions".
The project will use data on the members of the provincial organizations of the Partito Democratico della Sinistra. They date back to fifteen years ago, a time frame that allows researchers to measure career trajectories. A second strand of the project focuses on the electoral choices not driven by a rational benefit-cost analysis of electoral agendas. "We are testing the theory of cognitive dissonance in voting behavior".
A study was conducted in collaboration with some Italian candidates who have agreed to send their voters a few opposite messages selected by an algorithm: positive slogans, focused on their own electoral program, vs. negative slogans, focused on the opponent's shortcomings. "We have the first result: men are attracted by negative messages, while women reject them".
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Putting a Halt to the Spread of Infections
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