“Motivated Forecasts: Evidence from the Presidential Elections in Argentina”

Abstract: The increasing polarization in political issues could potentially affect one of the most important inputs that policymakers need to make decisions, i.e., agents’ expectations. I ask whether peoples’ forecasts about important economic indicators are affected by their political preferences. I conduct a pre-registered online experiment in a high-uncertainty political context given by the 2023 presidential elections in Argentina. The experiment exogenously manipulates the incentives to report accurate forecasts about economic indicators. I find that incentivizing responses reduces the gap between subjects’ forecasts regarding the performance of the different candidates and explore what drives the results.