Political Social Learning: Short-Term Memory and Cycles of Polarization
成果类型：
Article
署名作者：
Levy, Gilat; Razin, Ronny
刊物名称：
AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
ISSN/ISSBN：
0002-8282
DOI：
10.1257/aer.20220226
发表日期：
2025
页码：
635-659
关键词：
摘要：
This paper investigates the effect of voters' short-term memory on political outcomes by considering politics as a collective learning process. We find that short-term memory may lead to cycles of polarization and consensus across parties' platforms. Following periods of party consensus, short-term memory implies that there is little variation in voters' data and therefore limited information about the true state of the world. This in turn allows parties to further their own interests and hence polarize by offering different policies. In contrast, periods of polarization and turnover involve sufficient variation in the data that allows voters to be confident about what the correct policy is, forcing both parties to offer this policy.
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