IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/harjfk/rwp13-023.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Weather, Salience of Climate Change and Congressional Voting

Author

Listed:
  • Herrnstadt, Evan

    (University of MI)

  • Muehlegger, Erich

    (Harvard University)

Abstract

Climate change is a complex long-run phenomenon. The speed and severity with which it is occurring is difficult to observe, complicating the formation of beliefs for individuals. We use Google Insights search intensity data as a proxy for the salience of climate change and examine how search patterns vary with unusual local weather. We find that searches for "climate change" and "global warming" increase with extreme temperatures and unusual lack of snow. The responsiveness to weather shocks is greater in states that are more reliant on climate-sensitive industries and that elect more environmentally-favorable congressional delegations. Furthermore, we demonstrate that effects of abnormal weather extend beyond search behavior to observable action on environmental issues. We examine the voting records of members of the U.S. Congress from 2004 to 2011 and find that members are more likely to take a pro-environment stance on votes when their home-state experiences unusual weather.

Suggested Citation

  • Herrnstadt, Evan & Muehlegger, Erich, 2013. "Weather, Salience of Climate Change and Congressional Voting," Working Paper Series rwp13-023, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp13-023
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/workingpapers/citation.aspx?PubId=9036&type=WPN
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. George J. Stigler, 1971. "The Theory of Economic Regulation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 2(1), pages 3-21, Spring.
    2. Levitt, Steven D, 1996. "How Do Senators Vote? Disentangling the Role of Voter Preferences, Party Affiliation, and Senate Ideology," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 425-441, June.
    3. Anwar Hussain & David Laband, 2005. "The tragedy of the political commons: Evidence from U.S. Senate roll call votes on environmental legislation," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 124(3), pages 353-364, September.
    4. Andreas Madestam & Daniel Shoag & Stan Veuger & David Yanagizawa-Drott, 2013. "Do Political Protests Matter? Evidence from the Tea Party Movement," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(4), pages 1633-1685.
    5. Ann L. Owen & Emily Conover & Julio Videras & Stephen Wu, 2012. "Heat Waves, Droughts, and Preferences for Environmental Policy," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(3), pages 556-577, June.
    6. Kalt, Joseph P & Zupan, Mark A, 1984. "Capture and Ideology in the Economic Theory of Politics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 279-300, June.
    7. Matthew E. Kahn, 2002. "Demographic change and the demand for environmental regulation," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(1), pages 45-62.
    8. Tatyana Deryugina, 2013. "How do people update? The effects of local weather fluctuations on beliefs about global warming," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 118(2), pages 397-416, May.
    9. Peltzman, Sam, 1976. "Toward a More General Theory of Regulation," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(2), pages 211-240, August.
    10. Matthew E. Kahn & Matthew J. Kotchen, 2010. "Environmental Concern and the Business Cycle: The Chilling Effect of Recession," NBER Working Papers 16241, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Atif Mian & Amir Sufi & Francesco Trebbi, 2010. "The Political Economy of the US Mortgage Default Crisis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 1967-1998, December.
    2. Ando, Amy, 1998. "Delay on the Path to the Endangered Species List: Do Costs and Benefits Matter," RFF Working Paper Series dp-97-43-rev, Resources for the Future.
    3. Tanger, Shaun M. & Laband, David N., 2009. "An empirical analysis of bill co-sponsorship in the U.S. Senate: The Tree Act of 2007," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 260-265, July.
    4. Potters, Jan & Sloof, Randolph, 1996. "Interest groups: A survey of empirical models that try to assess their influence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 403-442, November.
    5. Berg, Sanford V. & Jiang, Liangliang & Lin, Chen, 2012. "Regulation and corporate corruption: New evidence from the telecom sector," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 22-43.
    6. John G. Matsusaka, 2005. "Direct Democracy Works," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(2), pages 185-206, Spring.
    7. Jannis Bischof & Holger Daske & Christoph J. Sextroh, 2020. "Why Do Politicians Intervene in Accounting Regulation? The Role of Ideology and Special Interests," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(3), pages 589-642, June.
    8. Stavins, Robert & Keohane, Nathaniel & Revesz, Richard, 1997. "The Positive Political Economy of Instrument Choice in Environmental Policy," RFF Working Paper Series dp-97-25, Resources for the Future.
    9. Duso, Tomaso & Seldeslachts, Jo, 2010. "The political economy of mobile telecommunications liberalization: Evidence from the OECD countries," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 199-216, June.
    10. Viktar Fedaseyeu & Erik Gilje & Philip E. Strahan, 2015. "Voter Preferences and Political Change: Evidence from Shale Booms," NBER Working Papers 21789, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Crone, Lisa & Tschirhart, John, 1998. "Separating economic from political influences on government decisions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 405-425, May.
    12. Okereke, Chukwumerije & McDaniels, Devin, 2012. "To what extent are EU steel companies susceptible to competitive loss due to climate policy?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 203-215.
    13. Kwan, Simon H., 2003. "Impact of deposit rate deregulation in Hong Kong on the market value of commercial banks," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(12), pages 2231-2248, December.
    14. Schnellenbach, Jan & Schubert, Christian, 2015. "Behavioral political economy: A survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 395-417.
    15. Çetin, Tamer & Yasin Eryigit, Kadir, 2013. "The economic effects of government regulation: Evidence from the New York taxicab market," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 169-177.
    16. Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto & Maria Petrova & Ruben Enikolopov, 2008. "The Dracula effect: voter information and trade policy," Economics Working Papers 1296, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Oct 2020.
    17. Shapiro, Jesse M., 2016. "Special interests and the media: Theory and an application to climate change," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 91-108.
    18. Cohen, Lauren & Diether, Karl & Malloy, Christopher, 2013. "Legislating stock prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(3), pages 574-595.
    19. Hayashida, Sherilyn & La Croix, Sumner & Coffman, Makena, 2021. "Understanding changes in electric vehicle policies in the U.S. states, 2010–2018," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 211-223.
    20. Jiang, Haiyan & Hu, Yuanyuan & Zhang, Honghui & Zhou, Donghua, 2018. "Benefits of Downward Earnings Management and Political Connection: Evidence from Government Subsidy and Market Pricing," The International Journal of Accounting, Elsevier, vol. 53(4), pages 255-273.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp13-023. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ksharus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.