Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/263697 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 9767
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
We empirically assess whether hindsight bias has consequences on how citizens evaluate their political actors. Using an incentivized elicitation technique, we demonstrate that people systematically misremember their past policy preferences regarding how to best fight the Covid-19 pandemic. At the peak of the first wave in the United States, the average respondent mistakenly believes they supported significantly stricter restrictions at the onset of the first wave than they actually did. Exogenous variation in the extent of hindsight bias, induced through random assignment to survey structures, allows us to show that hindsight bias causally reduces trust in government.
Subjects: 
hindsight bias
trust in government
evaluation distortion
biased beliefs
JEL: 
D72
D83
D91
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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