IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/igi/igierp/474.html

Some searches may not work properly. We apologize for the inconvenience.

   My bibliography  Save this paper

Emotions and Political Unrest

Author

Listed:
  • Francesco Passarelli
  • Guido Tabellini

Abstract

This paper formulates a general theory of how political unrest influences public policy. Political unrest is motivated by emotions. Individuals engage in protests if they are aggrieved and feel that they have been treated unfairly. This reaction is predictable because individuals have a con sistent view of what is fair. This framework yields novel insights about the sources of political influence of different groups in society. Even if the government is benevolent and all groups have access to the same technology for political participation, equilibrium policy can be distorted. Individuals form their view of what is fair taking into account the current state of the world. If fewer aggregate resources are available, individuals accept a lower level of welfare. This resignation effect in turn induces a benevolent government to procrastinate unpleasant policy choices.

Suggested Citation

  • Francesco Passarelli & Guido Tabellini, 2013. "Emotions and Political Unrest," Working Papers 474, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    • Handle: RePEc:igi:igierp:474
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.unibocconi.it/igier/igi/wp/2013/474.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Oliver Hart & John Moore, 2008. "Contracts as Reference Points," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(1), pages 1-48.
    2. Lohmann, Susanne, 1993. "A Signaling Model of Informative and Manipulative Political Action," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(2), pages 319-333, June.
    3. Roland Benabou & Jean Tirole, 2009. "Over My Dead Body: Bargaining and the Price of Dignity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 459-465, May.
    4. Joachim Voth, 2011. "Tightening Tensions: Fiscal Policy and Civil Unrest in Eleven South American Countries, 1937 - 1995," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 612, Central Bank of Chile.
    5. Roland Bénabou & Jean Tirole, 2006. "Belief in a Just World and Redistributive Politics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(2), pages 699-746.
    6. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, 2009. "Democratic Capital: The Nexus of Political and Economic Change," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 88-126, July.
    7. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2014. "A Decade of Debt," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Miguel Fuentes D. & Claudio E. Raddatz & Carmen M. Reinhart (ed.),Capital Mobility and Monetary Policy, edition 1, volume 18, chapter 4, pages 97-135, Central Bank of Chile.
    8. Loomes, Graham & Sugden, Robert, 1982. "Regret Theory: An Alternative Theory of Rational Choice under Uncertainty," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 92(368), pages 805-824, December.
    9. Battigalli, Pierpaolo & Dufwenberg, Martin, 2009. "Dynamic psychological games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(1), pages 1-35, January.
    10. Jonathan Shalev, 2000. "Loss aversion equilibrium," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 29(2), pages 269-287.
    11. John C. Harsanyi, 1953. "Cardinal Utility in Welfare Economics and in the Theory of Risk-taking," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 61(5), pages 434-434.
    12. Alesina, Alberto & Drazen, Allan, 1991. "Why Are Stabilizations Delayed?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1170-1188, December.
    13. Guido Tabellini, 2008. "The Scope of Cooperation: Values and Incentives," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(3), pages 905-950.
    14. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2011. "From Financial Crash to Debt Crisis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 1676-1706, August.
    15. Matthew Rabin., 1995. "Moral Preferences, Moral Constraints, and Self-Serving Biases," Economics Working Papers 95-241, University of California at Berkeley.
    16. Alberto Alesina & Dorian Carloni & Giampaolo Lecce, 2012. "The Electoral Consequences of Large Fiscal Adjustments," NBER Chapters, in: Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis, pages 531-570, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Collins, William J. & Margo, Robert A., 2007. "The Economic Aftermath of the 1960s Riots in American Cities: Evidence from Property Values," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 67(4), pages 849-883, December.
    18. Fabian Herweg & Klaus Schmidt, 2012. "Loss Aversion and Ex Post Inefficient Renegotiation," CESifo Working Paper Series 4031, CESifo.
    19. Ponticelli, Jacopo & Voth, Hans-Joachim, 2020. "Austerity and anarchy: Budget cuts and social unrest in Europe, 1919–2008," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 1-19.
    20. Fehr, Ernst & Hart, Oliver & Zehnder, Christian, 2011. "How Do Informal Agreements and Renegotiation Shape Contractual Reference Points?," IZA Discussion Papers 6095, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    21. Ernst Fehr & Oliver Hart & Christian Zehnder, 2011. "Contracts as Reference Points--Experimental Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 493-525, April.
    22. Paul F. Whiteley (ed.), 1998. "Economic Policy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, volume 0, number 996, December.
    23. Julio J. Rotemberg, 2010. "Altruistic Dynamic Pricing with Customer Regret," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 112(4), pages 646-672, December.
    24. Ernst Fehr & Oliver Hart & Christian Zehnder, 2008. "Contracts as reference points � experimental evidence," IEW - Working Papers 393, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    25. DiPasquale, Denise & Glaeser, Edward L., 1998. "The Los Angeles Riot and the Economics of Urban Unrest," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 52-78, January.
    26. Woo, Jaejoon, 2003. "Economic, political, and institutional determinants of public deficits," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(3-4), pages 387-426, March.
    27. Edoardo Grillo, 2014. "Reference Dependence and Politicians' Credibility," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 353, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    28. Jon Elster, 1998. "Emotions and Economic Theory," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(1), pages 47-74, March.
    29. Sugden, Robert, 2003. "Reference-dependent subjective expected utility," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 111(2), pages 172-191, 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. Edoardo Grillo, 2013. "Reference Dependence, Risky Projects and Credible Information Transmission," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 331, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    2. Maija Halonen-Akatwijuka & Oliver D. Hart, 2013. "More is Less: Why Parties May Deliberately Write Incomplete Contracts," NBER Working Papers 19001, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Alberto Alesina & Francesco Passarelli, 2019. "Loss Aversion in Politics," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 63(4), pages 936-947, October.
    4. Bierbrauer, Felix & Netzer, Nick, 2016. "Mechanism design and intentions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 557-603.
    5. Edoardo Grillo, 2014. "Reference Dependence and Politicians' Credibility," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 353, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    6. Marco Fongoni, 2018. "Workers' reciprocity and the (ir)relevance of wage cyclicality for the volatility of job creation," Working Papers 1809, University of Strathclyde Business School, Department of Economics.
    7. Ponticelli, Jacopo & Voth, Hans-Joachim, 2020. "Austerity and anarchy: Budget cuts and social unrest in Europe, 1919–2008," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 1-19.
    8. Hart, Oliver D., 2013. "Noncontractible Investments and Reference Points," Scholarly Articles 29058539, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    9. Canidio, Andrea & Karle, Heiko, 2022. "The focusing effect in negotiations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 197(C), pages 1-20.
    10. Bartling Björn & Grieder Manuel & Zehnder Christian, 2014. "Does competition justify inequality?," ECON - Working Papers 158, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Nov 2015.
    11. González-Jiménez, Víctor, 2024. "Incentive design for reference-dependent preferences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 221(C), pages 493-518.
    12. Massimo Warglien, 2013. "Language and economic organization," Chapters, in: Anna Grandori (ed.), Handbook of Economic Organization, chapter 8, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Alesina, A. & Passalacqua, A., 2016. "The Political Economy of Government Debt," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2599-2651, Elsevier.
    14. Dickson, Alex & Fongoni, Marco, 2019. "Asymmetric reference-dependent reciprocity, downward wage rigidity, and the employment contract," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 409-429.
    15. Alex Markle & George Wu & Rebecca White & Aaron Sackett, 2018. "Goals as reference points in marathon running: A novel test of reference dependence," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 56(1), pages 19-50, February.
    16. Rajkamal Iyer & Antoinette Schoar, 2015. "Ex Post (In) Efficient Negotiation and Breakdown of Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 291-294, May.
    17. Appelbaum, Elie & Katz, Eliakim, 2022. "Bonding by guilt: A resolution of the finite horizon prisoners’ dilemma," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    18. Alexander W. Cappelen & Rune Jansen Hagen & Erik Ø. Sørensen & Bertil Tungodden, 2014. "Do Non-Enforceable Contracts Matter? Evidence from an International Lab Experiment," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(1), pages 100-113, March.
    19. Barkaoui, Ahmed & Dragicevic, Arnaud Z., 2016. "Nash bargaining and renegotiation with social preferences: case of the roundwood log supply contracts in the French timber market," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 90-100.
    20. Fries, Tilman & Parra, Daniel, 2021. "Because I (don’t) deserve it: Entitlement and lying behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 495-512.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H0 - Public Economics - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:igi:igierp:474. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.igier.unibocconi.it/ .

    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.