06. July 2021 : New publication by Julia Müller in the European Journal of Political Economy

The manuscript of Prof. Dr. Julia Müller, Department of Business Administration, together with Prof. Dr. Thomas Apolte, University of Münster, entitled "The Persistence of Political Myths and Ideologies" has been accepted for publication at the European Journal of Political Economy.

 For more information, see: doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2021.102076

Abstract: Why do groups of even well-educated individuals sometimes persistently believe in political myths and ideologies? We follow cognition psychology in its finding that individuals sometimes stick with intuitive but false propositions. We maintain, however, that they challenge their intuition when the consequences for their individual welfare are sufficiently severe. We embed the underlying evidence in a model of social interaction that determines the conditions of a \textit {myth equilibrium}, in which almost all individuals deeply believe in a certain myth and stick with its ex-post rationalization, or those of a \textit {truth equilibrium} in which all individuals pursue ex-ante reasoning that aims to get as close to the truth as possible. We show how myths are clustered around certain groups and why groups are more likely to stick with political myths than individuals, thus disproving Condorcet's jury theorem.