Are conservatives overconfident?

Ortoleva, Pietro; Snowberg, Erik

doi:10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2015.04.007

Published December 2015 | Version Submitted

Journal Article Open

Are conservatives overconfident?

1. Columbia University
2. California Institute of Technology
3. National Bureau of Economic Research

Recent studies suggest psychological differences between conservatives and liberals, including that conservatives are more overconfident. We use a behavioral political economy model to show that while this is undoubtedly true for election years in the current era, there is no reason to believe that conservative ideologies are intrinsically linked to overconfidence. Indeed, it appears that in 1980 and before, conservatives and liberals were equally overconfident.

Additional Information

© 2015 Elsevier B.V. Prepared for the CESifo conference on Behavioural Political Economy, San Servolo, in July 2014, and the accompanying special issue of the European Journal of Political Economy. We thank our discussant at the conference, Chee Kian Leong, for his thought-provoking comments, and seminar attendees for their feedback. Snowberg gratefully acknowledges the support of NSF grant SES-1156154.

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