@workingpaper {683454,
	title = {Economic Interests, Worldviews, and Identities: Theory and Evidence on Ideational Politics},
	year = {2023},
	note = {January 2023},
	abstract = {
	We distinguish between ideational and interest-based appeals to voters on the supply side of politics, integrating the Keynes-Hayek perspective on the importance of ideas with the Stigler-Becker approach emphasizing vested interests. In our model, political entrepreneurs discover identity and worldview {\textquotedblleft}memes{\textquotedblright} (narratives, cues, frames) that invoke voters{\textquoteright} identity concerns or shift their views of how the world works. We identify a complementarity between worldview politics and identity politics and illustrate how they may reinforce each other. Furthermore, we show how adverse economic shocks (increasing inequality) lead to greater incidence of ideational politics. We use these results to analyze data on 60,000 televised political ads in U.S. localities over the years 2000 through 2018. Our empirical work quantifies ideational politics and provides support for key model implications, including the impact of higher inequality on the supply of both identity and worldview politics.

},
	author = {Elliott Ash and Sharun W. Mukand and Dani Rodrik}
}
