2025 Theses Doctoral

Essays in Political Economy and Public Economics: Information, Institutions, and Behavior

Mooers, Victoria Regina

This dissertation examines how the structure and flow of information shape individual decision-making and collective outcomes. Across three essays, it explores how social networks influence voter knowledge and participation, how allowing delegation in a voting system affects information aggregation, and how a program providing early information about college affordability affects educational attainment. Together, these essays study how institutions interact with and shape information environments, and the consequences for decision-making.

In Chapter 1, I study how political boundaries impact social learning. Informed voters are essential for government accountability, and social networks are an important avenue through which voters acquire political information. However, U.S. House of Representatives districts do not necessarily align with social networks. This misalignment potentially impacts the ease with which voters learn about their representatives, by altering the chance of encountering friends who provide relevant political information. I study whether the alignment between district boundaries and social networks affects voter knowledge, turnout, and campaign contributions in congressional elections. Using Facebook’s Social Connectedness Index and an event study design, I find that an increase in the share of friends living in the same district increases voters’ knowledge about their representative. For example, a 10 percentage point increase in this share raises the probability that a voter knows their representative’s party by 3.3 percentage points; this represents a 5\% increase over the mean. Additionally, a higher share of friends in the same district increases voter turnout in House elections and shifts campaign contributions towards own-district House candidates. I use a model of information diffusion to simulate the share of informed voters under counterfactual district maps, creating a framework to evaluate the informational effects of alternative maps. These findings suggest that aligning political boundaries with social networks can enhance democratic engagement.

In Chapter 2, coauthored with Joseph Campbell, Alessandra Casella, Lucas De Lara, and Dilip Ravindran, we study whether Liquid Democracy---in which decisions are taken by referendum, but voters can delegate their votes freely---can improve over existing systems in terms of information aggregation. We show that when better informed voters are present, delegation can increase the probability of a correct decision. However, delegation must be used sparely because it reduces the information aggregated through voting. In two different experiments, we find that delegation underperforms both universal majority voting and the simpler option of abstention.

In a tightly controlled lab experiment where the subjects’ precision of information is conveyed in precise mathematical terms and very salient, the result is due to overdelegation. In a perceptual task run online where the precision of information is not known precisely, delegation remains very high and again underperforms both majority voting and abstention. In addition, subjects substantially overestimate the precision of the better informed voters, underlining that Liquid Democracy is fragile to multiple sources of noise. The paper makes an innovative methodological contribution by combining two very different experimental procedures: the study of voting rules would benefit from complementing controlled experiments with known precision of information with tests under ambiguity, a realistic assumption in many voting situations.

In Chapter 3, I study a program that aims to increase college enrollment by addressing both financial and informational constraints. These "early commitment'' programs provide free tuition but require participants to sign up years before graduating high school. The goal is to ensure that students learn early the academic requirements for college and gain certainty about college affordability. This chapter examines an early commitment program in Oklahoma that is unique in its broad eligibility (families earning below median income) and its policy of not revoking scholarships if family incomes rise after sign-up, potentially enhancing certainty for participants.

Using synthetic control methods, I study the program's impact on college enrollment, high school completion, and standardized test scores. Among 18-19 year-olds, I find no consistent evidence of impacts on college enrollment or high school graduation. However, across specifications, I find a decline in the share of high school dropouts among 18-19 year-olds. This suggests the program may encourage students to remain in school longer, possibly to complete courses to meet scholarship eligibility requirements. Consistent with this, I replicate Bucceri (2013)'s finding that college enrollment increased among 18-21 year-olds from families earning less than $50,000. I also find an increase in high school graduation rates for this group. Additionally, I find evidence suggesting a decline in ACT scores but no consistent effect on SAT scores. Given test-taking patterns in Oklahoma, if the program encourages marginal students to prepare for college, it is unsurprising to see lower ACT scores and no effect on SAT scores, as the latter group was likely college-bound regardless.