An inquiry into the foundations of PERCeived INEQuality

Project Information

PERCINEQ

Grant agreement ID: 891256

DOI

10.3030/891256

Project terminated on 28 September 2022

EC signature date 20 April 2020

Start date 14 October 2020

End date 13 October 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 160 932,48

EU contribution

€ 160 932,48

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PERCINEQ (An inquiry into the foundations of PERCeived INEQuality)

Reporting period: 2020-10-14 to 2022-10-13

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

PERCINEQ analyses Perceived Inequality (PI), its causes and consequences from a theoretical and empirical perspective. The literature has often documented a substantial rise of income inequality with no increased public demand for redistributive measures. Trying to solve the puzzle of redistribution, many scholars have focused on PI and on misperceptions, namely the bias between objective and subjective inequality, stressing how the latter rather than the former shapes people's behaviors. PI is a very timely topic since it casts into the discussion of a “post-factual era”, it influences the desired size of government and political behaviours. Indeed, the topic is relevant given the increased threat that populisms pose to the Union cohesion.
Many social scientists have tried to understand if misperceptions can be partly corrected through the provision of accurate information. Nevertheless, it seems that provision of information cannot fully eliminate misperceptions. The evidence shows that people tend to be wrong about facts that scare or worry them. Misperceptions and emotions are thus strictly linked in the way they affect redistribution preferences and political behavior, in particular populist voting behaviors.
Considering the growing interest, PERCINEQ tries to address several questions hrough the creation of survey experiments, which aim at collecting new and original data to disentangle the main causal mechanisms underlying misperceptions and how the latter affect certain economic and political behaviors.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The work performed can be divided into 3 main results (training-research and dissemination) related to several working packages.

Considering WP2 (training and secondments), the fellow attended several courses: 1) Topics on Causal Inference; 2) Experimental Economics; 3) Topics in Inequality and poverty; 4) Python; 5) Experiments in the study of public opinion; 6) Big data; 7) Data protection. Beside the courses, the fellow realized two secondments, one in Palermo and another one in Sevilla.

Considering WP3 and WP4 (the research packages), the fellow has contributed to several scientific works. In particular, the fellow is working at 5 scientific studies at different stages of completion. One is focusing on the formation of preferences for redistribution depending on perceptions of inequality and immigration by using a survey experiment in Italy (final draft available). The second and third works look at the formation of preferences for redistribution now related to beliefs of meritocracy. These two works employ survey experiments in the USA. While the first of these two studies is considering a special sample population from the top and bottom 20% of the income distribution to directly address the puzzle of redistribution (final draft soon available), the second focuses on differences in redistribution along the gender dimension to address the so-called boy crisis (launch of the pilot in the upcoming months). A fourth work shifts the attention from developed countries to focus on developing countries. The aim is to investigate if perceptions of inequality are responsible not only of the formation of preferences for redistribution but also of the propensity to engage in political protest and to migrate (analysis of the pilot data under way). The work will answer to these research questions by using a survey experiment in Mexico. Finally, the fellow is working on a draft that revises the entire literature on the effect of information on perceptions in the formation of political preferences and it adds to the review a vignette experiment to study polarization in the USA (review of the literature complete and launch of the pilot in the upcoming months). The fellow will provide updates on her research related to the PERCINEQ project at https://sites.google.com/site/mariasmarino/home and https://twitter.com/mariasmarinoho1

Finally, with respect to the dissemination and exploitation of the results of the research (WP5), the fellow creates an international network starting new collaborations with scholars from several universities: Universidad Pablo de Olavide (ES); George Mason University (USA); University of Bari (IT), Bicocca University (IT), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NOR), Tuscia University (IT), Kiel – Institute for the World Economy (DE), University of Rennes (FR), University of Palermo (IT), University of Florence (IT), University of Barcelona (UB) among the others. Additionally, the fellow was presenting the results of her research in 3 conferences and 3 seminars. Two lectures (2021 and 2022) on Perception of Inequality were given within the Master in Applied Research in Economics and Business (MAREB) at the UAB (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona). The fellow was also presenting her work at the 2021 European Research Night in Barcelona and was disseminating information on perceptions of inequality through her twitter account. Finally, by becoming member of the CISEPS (Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Economics, Psychology & Social Sciences), she was involved in the scientific committee of a Workshop on Inequality to be held in April 2023 at Università di Milano Bicocca.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Building knowledge is a complex and slow process especially when it is aimed at understanding complex societal problems like the spread of misperceptions and its consequences in terms of political violence and polarization. PERCINEQ has pushed the frontiers of this knowledge in numerous ways. First, the fellow has pursued an interdisciplinary approach by expanding the economic understanding of misperceptions with contributions coming from different fields, in particular psychology and sociology. Second, given the causality revolution that social sciences are living in the recent years, the fellow has decided to answer PERCINEQ critical questions by using experiments. In so doing, we could explain causal relations between perceptions and political behaviors. Third, the fellow has stressed the importance of analyzing the impact of information not only on perceptions but also on emotions. In so doing, we can better understand the implication of living in an information age beyond the standard economic models of rationality.

Against this background, PERCINEQ will have several additional impacts in the next future, potentially on the European policies. The research will contribute significantly to understand how people form their policy preferences when exposed to new information. The research has highlighted the potential effects such new information can have not only on people’s individual lives but also on their social lives through their engagement in politics.
Therefore, this project is intricately connected to questions tied to policy-making processes. Why do people not ask for more redistribution in a time where inequality is increasing? Why we live in a polarized era? Why this is happening for certain groups only?
To conclude, PERCINEQ publications will have a potential impact on several audiences: 1) Policymakers & Regulators: they will be acknowledged on the role information plays in the formation of policy preferences; 2) Civil Society: by informing citizens on the project’s key research findings, they will learn how information can impact their lives; 3) Media: they will be better informed on the responsibilities they have when disseminating information.

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