Jake Haselswerdt

Public Opinion, Policy Tools, and the Status Quo: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

The method in which a government policy is delivered—for example, as a tax break rather than a direct payment—could potentially have significant implications for how the public views that policy. This is an especially important consideration given the importance of indirect policy approaches like tax breaks to modern American governance. We employ a series of survey experiments to test whether citizens react more favorably to tax breaks than to equivalent spending programs. We find that citizens prefer tax breaks, particularly when they are the established means of intervention. When direct intervention is the status quo, or when any government involvement on the issue is unfamiliar, the preference is reduced. We also find an interactive effect for ideology, with conservatives strongly preferring tax breaks to direct intervention, though the effect is still present among liberals. This study establishes the importance of delivery mechanism to citizens’ policy preferences and suggests that the policy status quo structures citizens’ perceptions of policy proposals.

Expanding Medicaid, Expanding the Electorate: The Affordable Care Act's Short-Term Impact on Political Participation

The Affordable Care Act is a landmark piece of social legislation with the potential to reshape health care in the United States. Its potential to reshape politics is also considerable, but existing scholarship suggests conflicting expectations about the laws policy feedbacks, especially given uneven state-level implementation. In this article I focus on the policy feedbacks of the laws Medicaid expansion on political participation, using district-level elections data for 2012 and 2014 US House races and cross-sectional survey data from 2014. I find that the increases in Medicaid enrollment associated with the expansion are related to considerably higher voter turnout and that this effect was likely due to both an increase in turnout for new beneficiaries and a backlash effect among conservative voters opposed to the law and its implementation. These results have important implications for our understanding of the ACA and of the impact of welfare state expansions on political participation, particularly in federalized systems.

The Lifespan of a Tax Break Comparing the Durability of Tax Expenditures and Spending Programs

Scholars have recently begun to recognize the importance of policy durability to the overall shape of public policy. Existing work on policy durability focuses on the political environment rather than elements of policy design, such as the delivery of benefits as a tax break instead of a direct outlay. I argue that the unique characteristics of tax breaks, including the relatively narrow reach of these policies, make them vulnerable to elimination. Using a newly expanded data set, I test this claim by examining the longevity of all federal tax and non-tax programs created between 1974 and 2003, and find that tax expenditures are more vulnerable to elimination than non-tax programs. Further analysis provides more support for my arguments, as narrowly targeted tax expenditures prove more vulnerable than those benefiting the public. This project makes an original contribution to the literatures on policy durability, indirect governance, tax policy, and policy feedback.

Information, Knowledge, and Attitudes: An Evaluation of the Taxpayer Receipt

To better understand the relationship between information and political knowledge, we evaluate an ambitious government initiative: the nationwide dissemination of “taxpayer receipts,” or personalized, itemized accounts of government spending, by the UK government in fall 2014. In coordination with the British tax authorities, we embedded a survey experiment in a nationally representative panel. We find that citizens became more knowledgeable about government spending because of our encouragement to read their receipt. Although baseline levels of political knowledge are indeed low, our findings indicate that individuals are capable of learning and retaining complex political information. However, even as citizens became more knowledgeable, we uncover no evidence that their attitudes toward government and redistribution changed concomitantly. The acquisition and retention of new information does not necessarily change attitudes. Our results have implications for citizens’ capacity to learn and research on the relationship between knowledge and attitudes.

Can Citizens Learn? An Evaluation of the Taxpayer Receipt

To better understand the relationship between information and political knowledge, we evaluate an ambitious government transparency initiative: the nationwide dissemination of “taxpayer receipts,�? or personalized, itemized accounts of government spending, by the UK government in Fall 2014. In coordination with the British tax authorities, we embedded a survey experiment in a nationally representative panel. We find that citizens became significantly more knowledgeable about government spending because of our encouragement to read their receipt. In contrast to previous lab-based studies that have documented knowledge increases, our finding depends on a field-based intervention. Yet even as citizens became more knowledgeable, we uncover no evidence that their attitudes toward government and redistribution changed concomitantly. While citizens are capable of acquiring and retaining complex new political information, their attitudes do not necessarily change as a result. Our results have implications for political knowledge, transparency policy and research on the relationship between knowledge and attitudes.