Michael Reddell • Jul 23, 2016 •
Since the successful Brexit vote on 23 June, there has been a great deal of (mostly rather disdainful) attention paid in some quarters to the demographic breakground of the support for Leave and Remain. Among aggrieved Remainers there has been a particular focus on the fact that – at least among those who bothered to turn out to vote – … Read More
Eric Crampton • Jul 05, 2015 •
Since none of us can really affect political outcomes, it's generally irrational to pay too much attention to politics. On that measure, men are far less rational than women - or at least by the studies of political knowledge I've come across (two exam... Read More
Eric Crampton • Apr 29, 2015 •
Four nationally representative survey samples collected in 2006, 2010, and 2011 indicate that over half of the American population consistently endorse some kind of conspiratorial narrative about a current political event or phenomenon and that these attitudes are predicted by supernatural, paranormal, and Manichean sentiments. These findings suggest that conspiracism is not only an important element in American political culture, … Read More
Eric Crampton • Oct 14, 2013 •
Americans surveyed in 2011 substantially overestimated the proportion of Americans identifying as homosexual. Where most estimates reckon about 3.5% of the population are homosexual, Americans surveyed thought that somewhere between 20-25% of the ... Read More
Eric Crampton • Jun 13, 2013 •
Phillip Metaxas and Andrew Leigh sat through 32 hours of Australian talking-head TV.* In all that talking, they were able to find only 20 falsifiable forecasts from Australian pundits. The rest were so qualified that they were unfalsifiable. They suggest that talk show hosts demand falsifiable predictions: A nice start would be for Insiders host Barrie Cassidy to insist … Read More
Eric Crampton • May 24, 2013 •
I enjoyed the CBC's radio show, The Invisible Hand. Rather than take a Freakonomics-style "wow, isn't this counterintuitive" take, they instead simply presented standard economic theory as it is understood by professional academic economists.Episode 1 covered price gouging, with a nice contribution from Mike Munger. (audio) Episode 2 takes on value theory. In the event of a zombie … Read More
Eric Crampton • Apr 03, 2013 •
I'll be talking this coming weekend with the fine Australian libertarian community about public choice problems with voting; I'll also be in a panel discussion on nanny state issues. Voting's been something of a longstanding problem in public choice. On purely instrumental accounts, where people vote to make it slightly more likely that their preferred policies are enacted, it's hard to explain … Read More
Eric Crampton • Mar 04, 2013 •
Economists disagree on some policies; you can usually find an economist willing to support some policy proposition that his colleagues won't like. But, surely, were there some set of policies agreed upon by economists from across the spectrum, it would... Read More
Eric Crampton • Jan 20, 2013 •
My first reaction: what an awesome idea. My second reaction: they lied to subjects about the purpose of the experiment and didn't fully inform respondents about what the surveys were about; their human ethics committee is far more awesome than others.... Read More
Peter Griffin • May 07, 2010 •
New Scientist last week foreshadowed today’s UK election with a look at what the scenarios are in a plurality system of government. The piece also explains the concept of the Banzhof power index which is particularly relevant to the UK election as according to polls 1/3 of voters of UK voters are going into this election undecided on who they … Read More