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Field
Intervention (Public)
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Before
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After
We will conduct an individually randomized control trial in Oaxaca City, Mexico. The experiment involves visiting close to 1750 voting age Mexicans in Oaxaca who already consented to participate in our previous study (https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.7770-1.0.) After asking baseline questions, we will randomly assign half of the urban sample to view a video of news footage of a second brother of the President taking a bribe. As detailed in the previous study, the urban sample includes 200 who had already seen a previous video of the first brother, as well as 200 who had received a video of opposition politicians, as well as 400 who had received a `nation-building' video, along with a financial exposure intervention. 150 had received a video about Mexico's economic performance, and 400 had received only a stock intervention. 400 were control. We cross-randomize the new treatment, assigning half in all these cells.
The aim of this new treatment is to examine the effects of information about corruption in a post-election setting, and also to examine whether effects of corruption cumulate with randomly assigned additional evidence. A cumulating effect is consistent with gradual Bayesian updating with strong initial priors. However, there are two reasons why there might be no cumulating effect. The first is that individuals may have already converged in their beliefs after the first dose of information, while the second is that they are unswayed by such information. we can test all of these, comparing individuals responses to the two waves of videos. It may also be a dormant effect: even if individuals do not immediately recall the first treatment, it may be the case that the `second brother’ video will have greater effects for those who had already been treated relative to those in the control who are exposed to this video.
We also anticipate differential treatment effects for ex ante stronger incumbent supporters. For those exposed to the incumbent treatment, these effects may be strengthened (due to greater updating) or weakened (due to motivated reasoning). However, since only 100 in the sample will have received both incumbent corruption videos, this intervention is underpowered, and therefore we consider it exploratory.
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