Benjamin Carter
Hello! I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Stony Brook University.
I am also a Health Policy Research Scholar with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
My research investigates why citizens oppose policies that promote equity, health, and economic security. I use methods from experimental economics and survey research to better understand how policy designs and political rhetoric interact with human psychology to shape political behavior.
For more information, see Research.
A copy of my CV can be found here.
Photo Credit: (c) 2018 Flynn Larsen. Photo Courtesy of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Dissertation
| Title: | Do People Understand the Benefits of Government? Experiments on Voting, Taxes, and Health Care |
Summary: | My dissertation uses economic games I designed and programmed to answer several questions about why citizens oppose policies that would bring them benefits (for demos, see Games). For instance, do people understand who benefits from higher taxes? Do people find it more intuitive to tax only the rich? And, do people prefer lower taxes when they believe income is based on merit? Finally, I use a survey experiment to ask whether people feel differently about taxes and social spending if they imagine the citizen-government relationship is based on authority, a communal bond, or market efficiency. |
| Committee: | Peter DeScioli, PhD (Chair)
Andrew Delton, PhD
John Ryan, PhD
Jason Barabas, PhD |
Peer Reviewed Publications
Barabas, J., Carter, B., & Shan, K. (2020). Analogical Framing: How Policy Comparisons Alter Political Support for Health Care Reform. American Politics Research, 48, 596–611. [pdf]
Works in Progress
- Integrating Web Applications with Popular Survey Software
With Alessandro Del Ponte
(Under Review)
- Do people understand who benefits from higher taxes?
With Peter DeScioli and Alessandro Del Ponte
(Manuscript in Prep)
- Is it more intuitive to tax only the rich?
With Peter DeScioli
(Data Collection and Analysis)
Play games!
I design games in JavaScript and HTML for experiments about politics. The games run on all popular web browsers and can be embedded in survey software, such as Qualtrics.
Click below to play demos of a Taxes and Voting Game I programmed for my research with Peter DeScioli and Alessandro Del Ponte. In the game, players earn high or low income and then vote about the tax rate.
Voting about sharing in a remote village:
Voting about taxes in a U.S. election:
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