Voter Response to Peak and End Transfers: Evidence From a Conditional Cash Transfer Experiment
50 Pages Posted: 28 Nov 2018
Date Written: November 4, 2018
Abstract
In a Honduran field experiment, sequences of cash transfers to poor households varied in amount of the largest (“peak”) and last (“end”) transfers. Larger peak-end transfers increased voter turnout and the incumbent party’s vote share in the 2013 presidential election, independently of cumulative transfers. A plausible explanation is that voters succumbed to a common cognitive bias by applying peak-end heuristics. Another is that voters deliberately used peak-end transfers to update beliefs about the incumbent party. In either case, the results provide experimental evidence on the classic non-experimental finding that voters are especially sensitive to recent economic activity.
Keywords: conditional cash transfers, voter behavior, experiments
JEL Classification: H3, I38
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation