If policymaking is sufficiently democratic, policies will update periodically when popular preferences change, and past policy choices will matter less as time passes. In this paper, I produce the first systematic empirical evidence on how long policy choices affect whether a policy is in effect, or operative. I assemble a novel dataset covering the statutory history of close U.S. state-level referendums since 1900 to estimate the effect of passing a referendum on whether it is operative up until a century later. In a regression discontinuity design, narrowly-passed policies are 40 percentage points more likely to be operative a century later than those that narrowly fail across a wide range of topics and levels of voter interest. I replicate this result with additional novel data on international referendums and congressional legislation.I develop a game-theoretic model that offers a novel explanation for policy persistence based on time-varying political interest. The finding of strong persistence implies many policies are misaligned with social welfare and provides (previously absent) support for event-study designs built around long-term policy changes.

In an incentivized survey experiment, respondents allocate resources over time for other people in two different age cohorts. In decisions about food security, savings bonds, and work, respondents repeatedly violate conventional approaches to intertemporal social welfare. The social discount rate most consistent with respondents’ choices is lower in real terms than any commonly-used rate. We also estimate a rate of pure time preference that is modestly negative. Furthermore, respondents’ equity preferences systematically deviate from common features of social welfare functions, such as time separability and a holistic consideration of the full consumption vector. The results imply that it may be necessary to choose between accommodating commonly-held time preferences and conventional approaches to social welfare.

Poverty assistance is often administered in-kind even though cash transfers might raise recipients’ welfare more effectively. We characterize the political economy constraint that paternalistic motives impose on the welfare system. In our experiment, a representative sample of U.S. citizens reveal their motives by deciding whether to constrain real U.S. food stamp recipients’ choices between in-kind donations and cash equivalents we disburse. The modal respondent (40%) imposes the strictest possible constraints, while 30% impose no constraints. Hence the majority’s behavior is consistent with deontological motives rather than trade-off thinking. Yet, because of biased beliefs about recipient preferences, respondents underestimate the restrictiveness of their interventions, suggesting that they are partly misguided. When respondents decide between restricting recipients whom they believed should be restricted and giving choice to those whom they believe should have choice, they place substantially more weight on the former motive, which, too, tends to increase the severity of restrictions. Overall, respondents’ goal is not to ensure sufficient healthy nutrition, but to prevent consumption of items deemed inappropriate. While respondents reveal racial and gender stereotypes in various survey questions, neither donor nor recipient demographics have substantial effects on restriction decisions, though restrictions increase with respondents’ political conservatism. In-experiment behavior correlates strongly with views about government policy.

Within both families and states, important policies involve pay-it-forward schemes where one cohort invests in the next cohort (e.g., via education), sometimes with an expectation of a future reward (e.g., retirement support). We study whether altruism, reciprocity, social information, or self-interested equilibriums can sustain forward transfers in an experimental setting. A sequence of players choose whether to allocate some of an endowment to be multiplied and given to a future, prior, or contemporary player. By varying the option set and the information set, we can separate possible mechanisms for sustaining investment in the future.We find that the ability to give back increases the willingness to give forward, but a social preference for reciprocity rather than individual rationality drives the result.

We study whether new plant-based meat and dairy alternatives and changing policies toward animal welfare affect or can be explained by changing consumer attitudes. We document trends in grocery purchases for different segments of the U.S. population and investigate potential drivers of changing interest in meat, eggs, dairy, and plant-based substitutes in the National Consumer Panel. We initially find little substitution for most consumers. Instead it seems as though the increase in consumption of plant-based alternatives is mainly driven by a small fraction of the population. There is some evidence, however, that this subset of the population is slowly but steadily growing. We plan to complement these descriptive trends with an analysis of how consumption responds to the arrival of novel plant-based substitutes in the grocery store and moving between regions with different consumption patterns. Furthermore, we intend to estimate a learning model to understand how consumers’ beliefs respond to initial purchases of plant-based alternatives.