The Roots of our Zero-Sum Moment

Stefanie Stantcheva is an economist at Harvard and the head of the Social Economics Lab, where her team has done extraordinary work investigating how people form their opinions about economic and political topics. That work was the subject of an earlier New Bazaar episode.

In this episode, Stefanie chats with Cardiff about the findings in her paper (with co-authors Sahil Chinoy, Nathan Nunn, and Sandra Sequeira), “Zero-Sum Thinking and the Roots of US Political Differences,” which was just published in the American Economic Review.

From the paper’s abstract:

“We find that a more zero-sum mindset is strongly associated with more support for government redistribution, race- and gender-based affirmative action, and more restrictive immigration policies. Zero-sum thinking can be traced back to the experiences of both the individual and their ancestors, encompassing factors such as the degree of intergenerational upward mobility they experienced, whether they immigrated to the United States or lived in a location with more immigrants, and whether they were enslaved or lived in a location with more enslavement.”

Stefanie and Cardiff also discuss:

• Rising anger in American society
• The subtle ways that the two major political parties are similar and different when it comes to zero-sum thinking
• The economic geography of zero-sum thought
• The finding that surprised her the most
• The generational gap in zero-sum thinking between young and old
• The policy implications of her research

Finally, Stefanie previews her upcoming work on zero-sum thinking and concerns about AI.

Related links:

• “Zero-Sum Thinking and the Roots of US Political Differences”
• “To understand America today, study the zero-sum mindset” (Stefanie’s guest essay in The Economist)
• “Emotions and Policy Views” (Stefanie’s working paper with Yann Algan, Eva Davoine, and Thomas Renault)
• “Dancing with the Stars” (Stefanie’s paper with Ufuk Akcigit, Santiago Caicedo, Ernest Miguelez, and Valerio Sterzi)

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