Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/25985 
Year of Publication: 
2007
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 1940
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
This paper analyzes a recent ballot in which two virtually identical popular initiatives, both demanding a decrease in the legal age of retirement in Switzerland, led to differences in approval rates of nearly seven percentage points. Based on this unique natural experiment, the existence of emphasis framing effects is tested for and their determinants are identified outside of the controlled settings of laboratories. Nonetheless, the analyzed setting allows for considerably more control than usually available in the field: All party, government and interest group recommendations were symmetric for both initiatives, and the simultaneous vote rules out potential variation of individual preferences and compositional changes of the electorate over time. Using community and individual level data it is shown that the difference in approval rates is largely due to the different emphases in the initiatives' titles.
Subjects: 
framing effect
voting
direct democracy
pension reform
bounded rationality
natural experiment
JEL: 
D01
D72
H55
J26
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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