Blog: The Monkey Cage

We all know about the power of defaults in everyday behavior and even in science. Here’s a fun example. The following appeared in my inbox the other day: Dear Dr. Gelman, *** greatly appreciates your service as a member of the ad hoc Committee that considered the appointment of ***. In recognition of your contribution, […]

Drezner on Zakaria: As one has more gobs of money tossed at them than they ever expected out of life approaches League [of Extraordinary Pundits] status, three factors dramatically increases the likelihood of this kind of thing happening. First, since the distribution of punditry assignments likely follows a power law distribution, superstars are asked to […]

Hibbs writes: The article also includes some fun bashing of other people’s models. I love that sort of thing! Hibbs concludes with a warning: Unless I’m missing something, Hibbs’s model does not include an incumbency advantage (which would give Obama a boost because he is running for reelection); that could make the difference between his […]

While Americans continue to fret about whether Paul Ryan will help or hurt Mitt Romney’s presidential chances, a remarkable drama is unfolding in the Russian political sphere. Three members of the Russian “feminist punk-rock collective” Pussy Riot have been on trial and are due to be sentenced on Friday. Here’s some background from the AP […]

Taken together, only a small fraction of the public has a rough sense of economic growth over the last 50 years, at least as reported by standard government statistics. Since the economy generally does well in election years, citizens will regularly encounter strong economic news from government agencies, such as the personal income numbers above. […]

In response to the disproportionate influence of the well-off that I document in Affluence & Influence some have argued that policy reflects (and perhaps should reflect) the preferences of the affluent because affluent Americans are better informed, or because they care more, or because they are more likely to engage politically by voting, contacting their […]

Well, that didn’t take long.  Already Republican politicos are “fretting over Paul Ryan,” reports Politico.  I don’t place much stock in that.  Just as I wouldn’t expect Ryan to help the ticket that much—vice-presidential nominees rarely do—I wouldn’t expect him to hurt the ticket either.  After all, the Obama campaign was already going to paint […]

In my previous post I discussed the lack of government responsiveness to the middle-class and the poor, when their policy preferences diverge from those of the affluent. This inequality is pervasive: I found no circumstances during the decades I examined in which the middle-class had as much influence as the well-off, or the poor as […]