Understanding and Reducing Bias among Political and Social Elites

This dissertation considers the biases that exist in the American political system. The first chapter presents a field experiment on the under-representation of women and people of color in American politics, finding that politicians may condition responsiveness and helpfulness on the ethnicity of their constituents, but not the gender of their constituents. The second chapter conducts a field experiment to study whether state legislators are responsive to public opinion and finds that most state legislators do not care about learning public opinion and therefore mis-perceive what their constituents believe. The final chapter then studies pediatricians and whether their incentives may explain low vaccination rates