IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecopol/v35y2023i1p146-162.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The effect of presidential election outcomes on alcohol drinking

Author

Listed:
  • Isabel Musse
  • Rodrigo Schneider

Abstract

The growing political polarization and the increasing use of social media have been linked to straining social ties worldwide. The 2016 presidential elections in the United States reflected this trend with reports of fear and anxiety among voters. We examine how election results can be linked to episodes of anxiety through the use of alcohol as self‐medication. We analyze a daily dataset of household purchases of alcohol in the weeks following presidential elections. We find that, within 30 days from Election Day, a 10 percentage point increase in support for the losing candidate increases alcohol expenditure by 1.1%. The effect is driven by counties with a higher share of supporters of the losing candidate and is robust to controlling more flexibly for omitted variables related to alcohol consumption. The increase in alcohol consumption is present in the 2016 elections and absent in the previous three presidential elections.

Suggested Citation

  • Isabel Musse & Rodrigo Schneider, 2023. "The effect of presidential election outcomes on alcohol drinking," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(1), pages 146-162, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecopol:v:35:y:2023:i:1:p:146-162
    DOI: 10.1111/ecpo.12212
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecpo.12212
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ecpo.12212?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rodrigo Schneider & Diloá Athias & Mauricio Bugarin, 2019. "Does enfranchisement affect fiscal policy? Theory and empirical evidence on Brazil," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 389-412, December.
    2. Lucas W. Davis, 2008. "The Effect of Driving Restrictions on Air Quality in Mexico City," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(1), pages 38-81, February.
    3. Charles Zech, 1975. "Leibenstein's bandwagon effect as applied to voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 117-122, March.
    4. Christopher Carpenter & Carlos Dobkin, 2010. "Alcohol Regulation and Crime," NBER Chapters, in: Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs, pages 291-329, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Bartels, Larry M., 1985. "Expectations and Preferences in Presidential Nominating Campaigns," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 79(3), pages 804-815, September.
    6. Chad Cotti & Richard A. Dunn & Nathan Tefft, 2015. "The Dow is Killing Me: Risky Health Behaviors and the Stock Market," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(7), pages 803-821, July.
    7. Michael L. Anderson, 2014. "Subways, Strikes, and Slowdowns: The Impacts of Public Transit on Traffic Congestion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(9), pages 2763-2796, September.
    8. Botond Kőszegi & Matthew Rabin, 2006. "A Model of Reference-Dependent Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(4), pages 1133-1165.
    9. Hunt Allcott & Matthew Gentzkow, 2017. "Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election," NBER Working Papers 23089, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. John M. Barrios & Yael Hochberg, 2020. "Risk Perception Through the Lens of Politics in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic," NBER Working Papers 27008, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Rodrigo Schneider, 2021. "Fewer guns, less crime: evidence from Brazil," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 36(106), pages 287-323.
    12. Maximilian Auffhammer & Ryan Kellogg, 2011. "Clearing the Air? The Effects of Gasoline Content Regulation on Air Quality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2687-2722, October.
    13. Daron Acemoglu & David H. Autor & David Lyle, 2004. "Women, War, and Wages: The Effect of Female Labor Supply on the Wage Structure at Midcentury," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(3), pages 497-551, June.
    14. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    15. David Card & Gordon B. Dahl, 2011. "Family Violence and Football: The Effect of Unexpected Emotional Cues on Violent Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(1), pages 103-143.
    16. Sergio Pinto & Panka Bencsik & Tuugi Chuluun & Carol Graham, 2021. "Presidential Elections, Divided Politics, and Happiness in the USA," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 88(349), pages 189-207, January.
    17. Kevin B Smith & Matthew V Hibbing & John R Hibbing, 2019. "Friends, relatives, sanity, and health: The costs of politics," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(9), pages 1-13, September.
    18. Steven D. Levitt & Jack Porter, 2001. "How Dangerous Are Drinking Drivers?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(6), pages 1198-1237, December.
    19. Ozkan Eren & Naci Mocan, 2018. "Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 171-205, July.
    20. Morton, Rebecca B. & Ou, Kai, 2015. "What motivates bandwagon voting behavior: Altruism or a desire to win?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 224-241.
    21. Marcus, George E. & MacKuen, Michael B., 1993. "Anxiety, Enthusiasm, and the Vote: The Emotional Underpinnings of Learning and Involvement During Presidential Campaigns," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(3), pages 672-685, September.
    22. Hunt Allcott & Matthew Gentzkow, 2017. "Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 211-236, Spring.
    23. Gerber, Alan S. & Huber, Gregory A., 2009. "Partisanship and Economic Behavior: Do Partisan Differences in Economic Forecasts Predict Real Economic Behavior?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 103(3), pages 407-426, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Qi Ge & Ignacio Sarmiento Barbieri & Rodrigo Schneider, 2021. "Sporting Events, Emotional Cues, And Crime: Spatial And Temporal Evidence From Brazilian Soccer Games," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(1), pages 375-395, January.
    2. Giulietti, Corrado & Tonin, Mirco & Vlassopoulos, Michael, 2020. "When the market drives you crazy: Stock market returns and fatal car accidents," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    3. Robbett, Andrea & Matthews, Peter Hans, 2018. "Partisan bias and expressive voting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 107-120.
    4. Sergei Guriev & Elias Papaioannou, 2022. "The Political Economy of Populism," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 60(3), pages 753-832, September.
    5. Catherine Hausman & David S. Rapson, 2018. "Regression Discontinuity in Time: Considerations for Empirical Applications," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 10(1), pages 533-552, October.
    6. Phillip Keefer & Carlos Scartascini, 2022. "Organization, Citizenship, and the Social Contract," IDB Publications (Book Chapters), in: Phillip Keefer & Carlos Scartascini (ed.), Trust: The Key to Social Cohesion and Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean, edition 1, chapter 8, pages 195-222, Inter-American Development Bank.
    7. Carola Binder, 2020. "Coronavirus Fears and Macroeconomic Expectations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(4), pages 721-730, October.
    8. Samuel Berlinski & Matias Busso & Phillip Keefer & Carlos Scartascini, 2022. "A Primer on Trust: Measures and Determinants," IDB Publications (Book Chapters), in: Phillip Keefer & Carlos Scartascini (ed.), Trust: The Key to Social Cohesion and Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean, edition 1, chapter 2, pages 27-50, Inter-American Development Bank.
    9. Sumit S. Deole & Yue Huang, 2024. "Suffering and prejudice: do negative emotions predict immigration concerns?," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 37(2), pages 1-39, June.
    10. Ryan Kendall, 2017. "Aligning Democracy: A Comment on Bruno S. Frey’s “Proposals for a Democracy of the Future”," Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 243-251, November.
    11. Jiménez Durán, Rafael & Muller, Karsten & Schwarz, Carlo, 2024. "The Effect of Content Moderation on Online and Offline Hate: Evidence from Germany’s NetzDG," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 701, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    12. Miguel Porrua & Benjamin Roseth, 2022. "The Link between Trust and Digital Transformation," IDB Publications (Book Chapters), in: Phillip Keefer & Carlos Scartascini (ed.), Trust: The Key to Social Cohesion and Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean, edition 1, chapter 6, pages 143-168, Inter-American Development Bank.
    13. Sergio Perilla & Razvan Vlaicu & Phillip Keefer, 2022. "Trust, Citizenship, and the Making of Good Public Policy," IDB Publications (Book Chapters), in: Phillip Keefer & Carlos Scartascini (ed.), Trust: The Key to Social Cohesion and Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean, edition 1, chapter 4, pages 79-108, Inter-American Development Bank.
    14. Gallo, E. & Langtry, A., 2020. "Social Networks, Confirmation Bias and Shock Elections," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2099, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    15. Remi Jedwab & Noel D. Johnson & Mark Koyama, 2019. "Negative shocks and mass persecutions: evidence from the Black Death," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 24(4), pages 345-395, December.
    16. Dang, Hai-Anh H. & Trinh, Trong-Anh, 2021. "Does the COVID-19 lockdown improve global air quality? New cross-national evidence on its unintended consequences," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    17. Balart, Pau & Casas, Agustin & Troumpounis, Orestis, 2022. "Technological change, campaign spending and polarization," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 211(C).
    18. Lovett, Nicholas & Xue, Yuhan, 2022. "Rare homicides, criminal behavior, and the returns to police labor," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 194(C), pages 172-195.
    19. Phillip Keefer & Carlos Scartascini, 2022. "The Power of Information," IDB Publications (Book Chapters), in: Phillip Keefer & Carlos Scartascini (ed.), Trust: The Key to Social Cohesion and Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean, edition 1, chapter 9, pages 223-254, Inter-American Development Bank.
    20. Patricio Dominguez & Veronica Frisancho & Bridget Hoffmann, 2022. "Trust and the Effectiveness of Public Policy," IDB Publications (Book Chapters), in: Phillip Keefer & Carlos Scartascini (ed.), Trust: The Key to Social Cohesion and Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean, edition 1, chapter 5, pages 109-142, Inter-American Development Bank.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ecopol:v:35:y:2023:i:1:p:146-162. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0954-1985 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.