Abstract
The issue of personal economic self-interest — people responding politically to changes in their financial well-being — has been a central focus in the economic voting literature. In a recent article, Kramer (1983) contended that people may be acting in a personally self-interested manner despite findings to the contrary from survey research analyses. In another article, Sears and Lau (1983) argued that findings of economic self-interest from survey data may be artifactual and that self-interested behavior may be even weaker than previously thought. In this paper I review the literature on economic self-interest and attempt to determine to what extent people do act on the basis of their financial well-being and under what conditions this is most likely.
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Feldman, S. Economic self-interest and the vote: Evidence and meaning. Polit Behav 6, 229–251 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00989619
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00989619