VIENNA JOINT ECONOMICS SEMINAR	INVITATION
Reminder: The University of Vienna and the Institute for Advanced Studies cordially invite you to the following Vienna Joint Economics Seminar Thursday, March 23, 2017 University of Vienna, Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1, 1090 Vienna, VGSE seminar room , 3rd floor 1:15 pm Salvatore Nunnari Univ.Bocconi A Model of Focusing in Political Choice This paper develops a theoretical model of voters' and politicians' behavior based on the notion that voters focus disproportionately on, and hence overweight, certain attributes of policies. We assume that policies have two attributes—their benefits and their costs (heterogeneous across voters)—and that voters focus more on the attribute in which their options differ more. First, we consider exogenous policies and show that voters' selective attention polarizes the electorate. Second, we consider the endogenous supply of policies by office-motivated politicians who take voters' distorted focus into account. We show that voters' selective attention leads to inefficient policies, which cater excessively to a subset of voters: social groups that are larger, have more distorted focus, are more moderate, and are more sensitive to changes in a single attribute are more influential. Finally, we show that augmenting the classical models of voting and electoral competition with selective attention can contribute to explain puzzling stylized facts as the inverse correlation between income inequality and redistribution or the backlash effect of extreme policies. Paper jointly with Jan Zapal We are looking forward to seeing you! Institute for Advanced Studies Josefstädter Straße 39, 1080 Vienna, Austria Tel.: +43 1 599 91 232 e-Mail: economics@ihs.ac.at http://www.ihs.ac.at		LINKS DIRECTIONS TO UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA on Google maps VIENNA JOINT ECONOMICS SEMINAR on Google calendar ECONOMICS SEMINARS IN VIENNA on Google calendar Institute for Advanced Studies @IHS_Vienna
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