Authors

Jeeyoung Park

Type

Text

Type

Dissertation

Advisor

Smirnov, Oleg | Norpoth, Helmut | Lebo, Matthew | Dawes, Christopher.

Date

2016-12-01

Keywords

Monetary Incentives, Partisan Bias, Partisanship, Political Information

Department

Department of Political Science

Language

en_US

Source

This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.

Identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/11401/76756

Publisher

The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.

Format

application/pdf

Abstract

This dissertation contains three parts - three papers. My dissertation tries to bridge the gap between two perspectives: the socio-psychological model and the rational choice model in voting behavior. The first part investigates how partisans behave in the prediction market. Using an agent-based model, my simulation results show that participants’ initial beliefs about a candidate’s winning probability, confirmation biases in accepting information, and monetary incentives strongly increase changes in participants’ beliefs about the electoral outcome captured by price volatility in the prediction market. The second part explores the microfoundation about individuals’ behavioral motivations in evaluating political candidates. My experimental results suggest that party identification may be either enhanced or weakened through the lens of utility maximization as well as a partisan perceptual screen. The third part examines how expected government partisanship matters for specific industrial sector or firm profitability during an election period. The empirical findings from EGARCH models confirm that the probability of an ideologically different party winning influences the returns of the defense and health care sectors. For the firm level analysis, my result also shows that the public announcement of Palin as McCains running mate decreases both actual and abnormal returns of firms associated with Obama’s key policies. | This dissertation contains three parts - three papers. My dissertation tries to bridge the gap between two perspectives: the socio-psychological model and the rational choice model in voting behavior. The first part investigates how partisans behave in the prediction market. Using an agent-based model, my simulation results show that participants’ initial beliefs about a candidate’s winning probability, confirmation biases in accepting information, and monetary incentives strongly increase changes in participants’ beliefs about the electoral outcome captured by price volatility in the prediction market. The second part explores the microfoundation about individuals’ behavioral motivations in evaluating political candidates. My experimental results suggest that party identification may be either enhanced or weakened through the lens of utility maximization as well as a partisan perceptual screen. The third part examines how expected government partisanship matters for specific industrial sector or firm profitability during an election period. The empirical findings from EGARCH models confirm that the probability of an ideologically different party winning influences the returns of the defense and health care sectors. For the firm level analysis, my result also shows that the public announcement of Palin as McCains running mate decreases both actual and abnormal returns of firms associated with Obama’s key policies. | 150 pages

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