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Overconfidence leads to risky behavior, including when people are around guns. Does overconfidence also shape attitudes about gun ownership and use? We evaluate this possibility by conducting nationally representative surveys in six countries in the Americas, including the United States. Results show that overconfident individuals are more willing to accept the use of guns and more likely to declare their willingness to use guns. These results indicate that overconfidence is a significant behavioral trait correlated with attitudes toward weapons handling, ownership, carrying, and use. Overall, over-confidence could lead, in equilibrium, to lower regulation than optimal and a higher amount of guns, even before considering the effect of the electoral system, lobbying, and campaign contributions. Efforts to correct the biases of individuals confronted with making decisions about guns should be a priority, especially in regulatory contexts. Information about actual performance and the risks entailed by wrong choices is a must. Obliging individuals to reflect on their choices may also help correct observed biases.

Anti-crime policy is often unresponsive to reductions in crime. To address why, we provide a model and empirical test of how citizens’ anti-crime policy preferences respond to information. Our model shows that preferences for anti-crime policy hinge on expectations about the crime rate: punitive policies are preferred in high crime contexts, whereas social policies are preferred in low crime contexts. We evaluate these expectations through an information experiment embedded in the 2017 Latin American Public Opinion Project survey conducted in Panama. As expected by our theory, a high crime message induced stronger preferences in favour of punitive policies. Unanticipated by our theory, but in line with cursory evidence and survey results, we find that a low crime message did not induce stronger preferences in favour of social policies. These findings are consistent with policy ratcheting: punitive policies increase during periods of high crime and remain in place during periods of low crime.

Environmental policies are characterized by salient short-term costs and long-term benefits that are difficult to observe and to attribute to the government's efforts. These characteristics imply that citizens’ support for environmental policies is highly dependent on their trust in the government's capability to implement solutions and commitment to investments in those policies. Using novel survey data from Mexico City, we show that trust in the government is positively correlated with citizens’ willingness to support an additional tax approximately equal to a day's minimum wage to improve air quality and greater preference for government retention of revenues from fees collected from polluting firms. We find similar correlations using the perceived quality of public goods as a measure of government competence. These results provide evidence that mistrust can be an obstacle to better environmental outcomes.

Crime levels are a perennial development problem in Latin America and a renewed concern in the United States. At the same time, trust in the police has been falling, and questions abound about citizens' willingness to support government efforts to fight crime. We conduct a survey experiment to elicit willingness to contribute toward reducing crime across five Latin American countries and the United States. We compare homicide, robbery, and theft estimates and find a higher willingness to contribute for more severe crimes and for higher crime reductions. In addition, we examine the role of information on the willingness to contribute by conducting two experiments. First, we show that exposing respondents to crime-related news increases their willingness to pay by 5 percent. Furthermore, while we document a 7 percent gap in willingness to pay for crime reduction between people who under- and over-estimate the murder rate, we find that this gap can be wholly eliminated by informing them about the actual level of crime. On average, our estimates suggest that households are willing to contribute around $140 per year for a 20 percent reduction in homicide. This individual-level predisposition would translate into additional investment in public security efforts of up to 0.5 percent of GDP.

Does exposure to crises reduce the citizens trust in a countrys president? Are individuals willing to accept fiscal reforms and make personal economic sacrifices if it would help the country to leave the crisis faster? We take advantage of two survey panels in Argentina and Uruguay, with a first wave fielded before COVID-19 (the crisis studied here) and a second wave a year later during the pandemic. Results provide no evidence of a decline in trust after the individual's health was compromised by COVID-19. We find mixed evidence of support for higher personal sacrifices. These results are relevant for understanding how voters' experience with COVID affects their trust in the government and whether crises could be prudent times for reforms. The results highlight the importance of having multi-country panel data for evaluating the impact of crises on trust.

Participatory programs can reduce the informational and power asymmetries that engender mistrust. These programs, however, cannot include every citizen. Hence, it is important to evaluate not only if they affect allocations and trust among those who participate, but also if they could also affect trust among those who do not participate. We assess the effect of an informational campaign about these programs in the context of a survey experiment conducted in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Results show that providing detailed information about a participatory budget initiative shapes voters' assessments of government performance and political trust. Effects are larger for individuals with ex ante more negative views about the local governments quality and for individuals who believe in the ability of their communities to solve the type of collective-action problems that the program seeks to address. Because mistrustful individuals tend to shy away from demanding the government public goods that increase overall welfare, well-disseminated participatory budget programs could affect budget allocations directly and through their effect on trust. Investing in these programs could be worthwhile.

We exploit mobility restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic to show the existence of a larger potential demand for telemedicine services in a middle-income developing country. We find an increase in the number of calls by 230 percent during the pandemic. The effects were mostly driven by older individuals with pre-existing conditions who used the service for internal medicine consultations. After the mobility restrictions were lifted, the demand for telemedicine services remained high.

We present the results of a survey experiment designed to evaluate the effects of social media exposure on perceptions of personal health and job risks during the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico. Our framing experiment treats respondents to positive and negative partisan messages from high-level politicians. Descriptive findings show divergent evaluations of how the government is addressing the crisis by supporters of the government and opposition parties. Results show that respondents are sensitive to negative frames regardless of the political color of the messenger. Further, supporters of the incumbent are more likely to deflect government’s responsibility when treated with a negative frame by a politician from the opposition.

Most tax agencies use letters as the method of communicating with taxpayers. Still, other technologies exist that could be more effective. This paper reports the results of a field experiment conducted by the National Tax Agency of Colombia (DIAN), using phone calls to reduce tax delinquencies. DIAN randomly assigned 34,000 tax debtors to a phone call operation using a fixed script to communicate existing debts and invite taxpayers to a meeting at the local tax agency office. Phone calls were very effective to increase collection of unpaid taxes. Conditional on the phone call being made, the effect on the treatment is about 25 percentage points higher than the control group (about a fivefold increase). We also find suggestive evidence that the personal interaction seems to be an important channel for explaining taxpayers’ behavior. Faced with a tax agent, taxpayers tend to commit to attending the meeting and paying the tax owed. However, many taxpayers who commit do not make payment effective. The findings complement a nascent literature that shows that there are plenty of gains from innovating in the communication strategy. They also indicate that personal interactions are important, but they have to be paired with easy-to-follow and immediate actions. Paying taxes is easier said than done.

A new survey of 6,040 voting-age individuals conducted in seven Latin American metropolitan areas reveals that political and interpersonal mistrust, risk aversion and time impatience are strong predictors of voter preferences for public spending. Respondents with higher mistrust or impatience are more likely to choose transfers over public goods; more impatient respondents are also more likely to choose current spending over public investment. Randomized experiments providing information about the benefits of public investment have the expected average demand impacts. Respondents with high political mistrust or impatience increase their demand for public investment significantly less than others.

Telemedicine can expand access to health care at relatively low cost. Historically, however, demand for telemedicine has remained low. Using administrative records and a difference-in-differences methodology, we estimate the change in demand for telemedicine experienced after the onset of the COVID-19 epidemic and the imposition of mobility restrictions. We find that the number of telemedicine calls made during the pandemic increased by 230 percent compared to the pre-pandemic period. The effects were mostly driven by older individuals with preexisting conditions who used the service for internal medicine consultations. The demand for telemedicine remained relatively high even after mobility restrictions were relaxed, which is consistent with telemedicine being an "experience good." These results are a proof of concept for policy makers to use such relatively low-cost medical consultations, made possible by new technologies, to provide needed expansion of access to health care.

Sending messages and providing information to individuals tends to affect their behavior (e.g., reduce energy consumption, increase donations, reduce tax evasion). Most studies to date have concentrated on evaluating the effect of different types of messages but they have avoided discussing if the method to communicate those messages could affect the effectiveness of the intervention. This study shows that the effectiveness of a message is not independent of the communication method used. We conducted a field experiment in Colombia that varies the way the National Tax Agency contacts delinquent taxpayers. More than 20,000 taxpayers were randomly assigned to a control or one of three delivery mechanisms (letter, email, and personal visit). Conditional on delivery of the treatment, a personal visit is more effective than an email, and both are more effective than a letter (the more traditional method used by tax administrations and researchers worldwide). The findings show that identifying the mechanisms through which policies are informed and publicized should be fully incorporated in the literature to assess the effectiveness of an intervention. Tax administrations should explicitly evaluate what is the right vector of communication methods that maximizes their policy objectives.

Trust is the most pressing and yet least discussed problem confronting Latin America and the Caribbean. Whether in others, in government, or in firms, trust is lower in the region than anywhere else in the world. The economic and political consequences of mistrust ripple through society. It suppresses growth and innovation: investment, entrepreneurship, and employment all flourish when firms and government, workers and employers, banks and borrowers, and consumers and producers trust each other. Trust inside private and public sector organizations is essential for collaboration and innovation. Mistrust distorts democratic decision-making. It keeps citizens from demanding better public services and infrastructure, from joining with others to control corruption, and from making the collective sacrifices that leave everyone better off. The good news is that governments can increase citizen trust with clearer promises of what citizens can expect from them, public sector reforms that enable them to keep their promises, and institutional reforms that strengthen the commitments that citizens make to each other. This book guides decision-makers as they incorporate trust and social cohesion into the comprehensive reforms needed to address the regions most pernicious challenges.

Las herramientas de la economía del comportamiento parecen ser efectivas para afectar los incentivos de los funcionarios para cumplir con los pedidos de acceso a la información pública en la ciudad de Buenos Aires. Las notificaciones de los pedidos que incorporan las recomendaciones de la economía del comportamiento hacen que los vencimientos sean más visibles y aumentan el cumplimiento. Otras estrategias tradicionales para mejorar el desempeño, como los programas de capacitación, no funcionan necesariamente según lo planeado. De hecho, algunas sesiones de capacitación sobre la importancia de la legislación provocaron un aumento de los retrasos. Dado que juntan individuos de distintos grupos, los programas de capacitación crearon efectos secundarios: el tiempo que un miembro del grupo de tratamiento tarda en responder a una solicitud aumenta con sus interacciones con miembros del grupo de control en los talleres.

Punitive anti-crime policies in the Americas have contributed to steadily increasing rates of incarceration. Harsh penalties are often demanded by citizens, making them attractive to politicians. Yet the contextual determinants of participation in crime are rarely understood by the public. In this article, we employ a survey experiment conducted in Chile in order to examine how the provision of information about the prison population shapes tastes for punitive anti-crime policies. Respondents in the treatment group received information about the low educational attainment of prisoners. This information led to substantial changes in policy preferences. Tasked with allocating resources to anti-crime policies using a fixed budget, treated respondents assigned between 20% and 50% more to socially oriented anti-crime policies (relative to punitive policies) than respondents in the control group, and they reduced their support for “ iron fist” policing. Our findings suggest that providing information to citizens might change the policy equilibrium in the Americas.

Introducing financial incentives to increase productivity in the public sector tends to be politically and bureaucratically cumbersome, particularly in developing countries. Behavioral interventions could be a low-cost alternative, both politically and financially, although evidence of their effectiveness remains scarce. We evaluate the effect of redesigning the notice requiring civil servants in Buenos Aires to comply with citizens requests under Argentina's freedom of information act. The new notice, sent to the treatment group, attempts to exploit salience, deterrence, clarity, and social norms to increase adherence to deadlines. The results show an increase in the share of requests fulfilled by the second deadline, possibly because of a strong anchoring effect. These findings indicate that behavioral interventions can affect civil servants' actions. The fact that the intervention occurred at the same time as a civil service training program with sessions attended by members of both the control and treatment groups allows us to evaluate spillover effects. The evidence suggests that the time it takes a members of the treatment group to respond to a request increases with her interactions with members of the control group at the workshops. These findings have implications for policy design. First, they indicate that behavioral interventions could affect task compliance and productivity in the public sector. Second, they provide evidence that workshops may not always have the intended consequences, particularly when they increase interactions among employees with high and low incentives for task compliance.

When consumption of water and other utilities is measured collectively and payment for such services is equally shared among members of the group, individuals may use more than what is socially optimal. In this paper, we evaluate how installation of individual meters affects water consumption. Using rich administrative data from the public water utility company in Quito, Ecuador, it is estimated that water consumption decreases by about 8% as a result of the introduction of individual metering. The effect is large and economically significant: in order to obtain the same effect prices would have to double. Individual water metering could be a useful tool to curve down consumption in both developing and developed countries.

Trust in government and the perceived quality of public services are positively correlated with support for an additional tax to improve air quality. Trust in government and the perceived quality of public services are positively correlated with a preference for government retention of revenue from fees collected from polluting firms as opposed to distribution of revenue directly to citizens. Trust in government and the perceived quality of public services are not significantly correlated with citizens preferences on the allocation of those revenues between public spending and private goods.

Data on political engagement of newly eligible young voters in 34 countries during 2004-2016 indicate that voting eligibility is associated with higher political engagement, casting doubt on the view that voters are rationally ignorant. Voting eligibility is associated with higher political interest, more discussion of political issues and attendance of political meetings, and more political knowledge. These effects are stronger in countries with enforced mandatory voting. The increase in political engagement is larger closer to the prior election, and it is driven by the engagement of eligible voters, implying that young voters acquire political information in anticipation of elections rather than ex post.

Why do voters elect politicians whose populist policies degrade the quality of government? Low social trust can account for this paradox: it undermines the collective action by voters that is necessary to elect politicians who support high-quality government. If all voters believe that every other voter will accept particularistic benefits in exchange for supporting poorly performing governments, no voter has an incentive to spurn those benefits in order to select politicians who promise high-quality government. By the same logic, low social trust prevents voters from sanctioning politicians who renege on their promises. Low political trust springs from social mistrust, yielding low-quality government and populism as optimal electoral strategies. New survey data from seven Latin American countries reveal that respondents who exhibit low social trust are more likely to prefer populist policies that reflect a low quality of government.

Recent increases in political polarization in social media raise questions about the relationship between negative online messages and the decline in political trust around the world. To evaluate this claim causally, we implement a variant of the well-known trust game in a survey experiment with 4,800 respondents in Brazil and Mexico. Our design allows to test the effect of social media on trust and trustworthiness. Survey respondents alternate as agents (politicians) and principals (voters). Players can cast votes, trust others with their votes, and cast entrusted votes. The players rewards are contingent on their preferred “candidate” winning the election. We measure the extent to which voters place their trust in others and are themselves trustworthy, that is, willing to honor requests that may not benefit them. Treated respondents are exposed to messages from in-group or out-group politicians, and with positive or negative tone. Results provide robust support for a negative effect of uncivil partisan discourse on trust behavior and null results on trustworthiness. The negative effect on trust is considerably greater among randomly treated respondents who engage with social media messages. These results show that engaging with messages on social media can have a deleterious effect on trust, even when those messages are not relevant to the task at hand or not representative of the actions of the individuals involved in the game.

Crime is a major problem in Latin America and the Caribbean. With 9 percent of the world's population, the region accounts for 33 percent of global homicides. This dataset makes extensive new survey data available to help identify what anti-crime policies citizens in the region demand from their governments, as well as who is demanding what and why. This dataset accompanies a recent report on Combating Crime in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Crime is a major problem in Latin America and the Caribbean. With 9 percent of the world's population, the region accounts for 33 percent of global homicides. Using new, extensive survey data, we endeavor to identify what anti-crime policies citizens in the region demand from their governments. We also analyze who is demanding what and why. We find that harsher penalties appear to be the preferred weapon in the anti-crime arsenal but people are willing to spend public moneys not only for punishment, but also for anti-poverty and detection policies. Citizens recognize that allocating resources to the police is better than subsidizing private security for citizens. Nevertheless, most oppose raising taxes to fund the police, a reluctance that might stem from mistrust in governments' ability to manage these resources. Mistrust, misinformation, and impatience combine to create flawed anti-crime policy. Educating citizens both about crime and about the fiscal consequences of their policy preferences may help move the region's public opinion toward a better policy equilibrium. Governments should also invest in their capability to design and deliver evidence-based solutions for fighting crime, and work to increase trust levels among citizens.

What happens when the tax authority increases enforcement in one tax with the level of compliance in other taxes? The very little evidence available is not conclusive. This paper presents a very simple analytical model that shows the conditions under which spillovers could be positive or negative in the context of uncorrelated taxes for the same individual (a property tax and a self-declaration tax—in this instance, a gross-sale tax). In the model, the sign of the spillover depends on how taxpayers update their beliefs on penalty and detection probabilities for one tax after watching the deterrence actions the tax agency took on another tax. Results from a randomized field experiment show no evidence of negative spillovers: increasing the salience of fines and enforcement probabilities for those who do not comply with the payment of the property tax does not decrease how much the same individual declares on the gross-sale tax. The result has ample implications for researchers bringing interventions to the field and for governments’ enforcement strategies. Given that most taxpayers are liable for more than one tax, neither researchers nor authorities can continue to neglect potential spillovers of interventions. Instead, they should design enforcement strategies that maximize compliance across the portfolio of taxes. Importantly, this work indicates that penalties and detection may not be perfect substitutes when the portfolio is taken into consideration.

Social norms used in communications can help/hurt compliance with public health guidelines. In Mexico, a survey experiment was conducted to explore the knowledge-behavior gap in social distancing noncompliance. Despite believing that attending social gatherings is inappropriate, communicating to a person that friends are highly likely to attend the party increases the probability of generalizing others attendance and possibly their own. Believing that it is appropriate to attend a party during COVID-19 and knowing that most friends will go does not make one more likely to guess that a person will attend that party than if one believed it was not appropriate to attend the party. This represents a contradiction.

Willingness to download health applications could be increased by addressing data privacy concerns indirectly. In Mexico, a survey experiment explored different priming prompts and their effect on willingness to download a diagnostic and tracing app. The survey experiment revealed that mentioning government efforts on data privacy can backfire. Surprisingly, reminding people of social media's usefulness did not affect people's willingness to download the app.

Telemedicine can expand access to health care at relatively low cost. Historically, however, demand for telemedicine has remained low. Using administrative records and a difference-in-differences methodology, we estimate the change in demand for telemedicine experienced after the onset of the COVID-19 epidemic and the imposition of mobility restrictions. We find a 233 percent increase in the number of telemedicine calls and a 342 percent increase in calls resulting in a medication being prescribed. The effects were mostly driven by older individuals with pre-existing conditions who used the service for internal medicine consultations. The demand for telemedicine remains high even after mobility restrictions were relaxed, which is consistent with telemedicine being an experience good. These results are a proof of concept for policymakers willing to expand access to healthcare using advances in technology.

Inclusive growth requires high levels of trust, both among individuals and in institutions, and trust is shaped by a variety of factors, including the distribution of income and wealth. This is problematic when that distribution is not perceived as legitimate. Latin America and the Caribbean has traditionally been a highly unequal region. Inequality might be associated with lower trust because it reflects an unequal distribution of power, as those at the top can use the states coercive power to benefit themselves at the expense of others. Inequality nonetheless tends to be wrongly estimated, as most people do not accurately estimate their countrys income and wealth distribution, or their position within.

While effective preventive measures against COVID-19 are now widely known, many individuals fail to adopt them. This paper provides experimental evidence about one potentially important driver of compliance with social distancing: social norms. We asked each of 23,000 survey respondents in Mexico to predict how a fictional person would behave when faced with the choice about whether or not to attend a friend's birthday gathering. Every respondent was randomly assigned to one of four social norms conditions. Expecting that other people would attend the gathering and/or believing that other people approved of attending the gathering both increased the predicted probability that the fictional character would attend the gathering by 25% in comparison with a scenario where other people were not expected to attend nor to approve of attending. Our results speak to the potential effects of communication campaigns and media coverage of, compliance with, and normative views about COVID-19 preventive measures. They also suggest that policies aimed at modifying social norms or making existing ones salient could impact compliance.

Anti-crime policy preferences can be swayed by the framing of crime rate information. Both framing information as an upward trend in crime or a downward trend in crime increased demands for punitive policies as opposed to social policies, when compared to a control group that received no information. Individuals with no previous information about crime rates were more affected by the treatments than those who were familiar with crime rates in the country.

The Database of Political Institutions presents institutional and electoral results data such as measures of checks and balances, tenure and stability of the government, identification of party affiliation and ideology, and fragmentation of opposition and government parties in the legislature. The current version of the database expands its coverage to about 180 countries for 45 years, 1975-2020. It has become one of the most cited databases in comparative political economy and comparative political institutions, with more than 4,500 article citations on Google Scholar as of December 2020.

Diagnostic and contact tracing apps are a needed weapon to contain contagion during a pandemic. We study how the content of the messages used to promote the apps influence adoption by running a survey experiment on approximately 23,000 Mexican adults. Respondents were randomly assigned to one of three different prompts, or a control condition, before stating their willingness to adopt a diagnostic app and contact tracing app. The prompt emphasizing government efforts to ensure data privacy, which has been one of the most common strategies, reduced willingness to adopt the apps by about 4 pp and 3 pp, respectively. An effective app promotion policy must understand individuals’ reservations and be wary of unintended reactions to naïve reassurances.

While effective preventive measures against COVID-19 are now widely known, many individuals fail to adopt them. This article provides experimental evidence about one potentially important driver of compliance with social distancing: social norms. We asked each of 23,000 survey respondents in Mexico to predict how a fictional person would behave when faced with the choice about whether or not to attend a friend’s birthday gathering. Every respondent was randomly assigned to one of four social norms conditions. Expecting that other people would attend the gathering and/or believing that other people approved of attending the gathering both increased the predicted probability that the fictional character would attend the gathering by 25%, in comparison with a scenario where other people were not expected to attend nor to approve of attending. Our results speak to the potential effects of communication campaigns and media coverage of compliance with, and normative views about, COVID-19 preventive measures. They also suggest that policies aimed at modifying social norms or making existing ones salient could impact compliance.