Signal and Noise: Why Politics Is About Culture When Voters Want Economics

Voters consistently say they care most about the economy — jobs, wages, inflation, the price of gas. So why are campaigns so often fought over culture? In this episode, Konstantin Sonin, the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and co-director of BFI's Political Economics Initiative, walks host Tess Vigeland through his theory of "multi-dimensional signaling." Because economic policy is too complex for voters to fully decode, they read a candidate's cultural stances as a proxy for what that candidate will do economically, and politicians exploit it.