Panel data covering the French population before and after the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic reveal that self-reported health and well-being have improved during the lockdown in comparison to previous years. We name this counterintuitive phenomenon the "eye of the hurricane" paradox: the large majority of individuals who are not infected by the virus may be seeing their current condition in a more positive light than they normally would. There are, however, divergences across social groups that reflect socioeconomic inequalities. In particular, blue-collar workers deviate from the prevailing trend as their level of self-reported health declines over the lockdown period, Parisian residents experience a sudden drop in their subjective well-being, and people working long hours at home exhibit higher levels of stress during the quarantine.
We report on laboratory experiments on voting. In a setting where subjects have single-peaked preferences we find that the rational choice theory provides very good predictions of actual individual behavior in one-round and approval voting elections, but fares poorly in explaining vote choice under two-round elections. We conclude that voters behave strategically as far as strategic computations are not too demanding, in which case they rely on simple heuristics (in two-round elections) or they just vote sincerely (in single transferable vote elections).
The French two-round system of presidential elections forces candidates to choose strategies designed to maximize their votes in two different, potentially conflicting strategic contexts: a first round contest between many candidates, and a second round between (typically) a left-
The authors test a model of strategic vote choice in which the decision to support or not to support a candidate depends on the benefit associated with the election of a given candidate and the candidate's perceived viability. They test the model with data collected in a series of experiments in which the participants voted in eight successive elections, four in one round and four in two rounds. Results show that the same model applies to both voting systems, although the impact of perceived viability is slightly weaker in two-round elections. The authors conclude that strategic considerations are almost as important in two-round as in one-round elections.
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