Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse

Socially guided individual learning mitigates the double-edged sword of pedagogy

Social learning and innovation are fundamental processes in cultural evolution, yet their interaction remains poorly understood. Prior research suggests that inheriting social information reduces exploration. However, most studies have focused on the transmission of fully fledged...

Electoral results affect beliefs about the past: Evidence from Chile

Can electoral outcomes shape voters' perceptions of the past? We argue that electoral outcomes provide informational cues that prompt voters to reinterpret prior conditions, shifting the benchmarks on which accountability rests. We focus on perceptions of crime, a valence issue t...

Urbanization and electoral success: lawyers and workers in interwar France

This study argues that urbanization altered the relationship between candidates’ occupation and their electoral success. To identify the causal effect of local variation in urbanization, we exploit exogenous changes in the boundaries of electoral constituencies in the 1928, 1932,...