Tyler Smith
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When Donald Trump entered the political scene, he relied heavily on rhetoric pitting one group against another\u2014immigrants versus native-born citizens, China versus the United States, the Washington elite versus everyone else. Underlying this message is the idea that someone else’s gain is your loss, which may have appealed to individuals across the political spectrum with a zero-sum view of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a paper in the American Economic Review<\/em><\/a>, authors Sahil Chinoy<\/a>, Nathan Nunn<\/a>, Sandra Sequeira<\/a>, and Stefanie Stantcheva<\/a> investigate zero-sum thinking, tracing its origins across generations and documenting its influence on policy preferences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The authors build on the ideas of anthropologist George Foster, who described a worldview based on the “image of limited good”\u2014the belief, observed in small preindustrial societies, that societal output is fixed and that any gain for one party necessarily diminishes another. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u03a0\u03b7\u03b3\u03ae: www.aeaweb.org<\/p>\n\n\n\n