Enke, Benjamin
[VerfasserIn];
Fisman, Raymond
[VerfasserIn];
Freitas, Luis Mota
[VerfasserIn];
Sun, Steven
[VerfasserIn]
;
National Bureau of Economic Research
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This paper provides field evidence on the link between morals and political behavior. We develop a theory-guided real-stakes measure of each U.S. district's values on the universalism-particularism continuum, which reflects the degree to which charitable giving decreases as a function of social distance. District universalism is strongly predictive of local Democratic vote shares, legislators' roll-call voting, and the moral content of Congressional speeches. These results hold in both across- and within-party analyses. Overall, spatial heterogeneity in universalism is a substantially stronger predictor of geographic variation in political outcomes than traditional economic variables such as income or education