Policy Preferences and Outcomes under Social Identification (FWOTM878)

Economic theory often faces criticism for involving unrealistically rational and self-regarding agents. While recent work in behavioral economics targets the rationality assumption, my project engages with individuals’ pervasive tendency – well established in social psychology – to see themselves and their societies in terms of social groups. This can yield new and important insights on subjects central to public policy: redistribution and the provision of public goods. Such policies depend fundamentally on our willingness to share with – or appropriate from – one another. Hence, ignoring our regard for others within our social group(s) is a particular impediment to fully explaining these policies, and those who support them.

The project uses novel theoretical models and empirical methods to analyze how individuals’ social identities help determine their political preferences and behaviors, and how the transmission of these preferences into policy is affected by social groups’ compositions. It explores the boundaries of social groups, the importance of how individuals construe the line between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and the crucial social divides generated by immigration and ethno-linguistic communities. It also uses group identity to explain individual preferences, policy outcomes, and the role of elected officials spanning the two. Together, these contributions offer new understanding of when and why public policies come about, and whom they serve.

Keywords:social identification, Economics

Disciplines:Applied economics not elsewhere classified