Behavioural politics, day 2 of 30
Yesterday, the Tories won the first behavioural battle of the election campaign. Policy of the day is national insurance. Labour has committed to a rise of 1% in the employers' national insurance rate from April 2011 and the Conservatives have said they'll cancel this increase (for readers outside the UK, national insurance is our payroll tax, and the employers' component is the part paid by the company, as opposed to the part which is deducted from the employee's salary like income tax. Currently the rate is 12.8% and will rise to 13.8% under this policy). When the Tories announced this policy, around twenty chief executives of large companies wrote to the FT in their support. This was followed by another three on Tuesday and, yesterday, thirty more. So how does this play out behaviourally? I mentioned a couple of things yesterday which remain true: the Tories gain social proof from the support of senior businesspeople, and the recency bias means that the iss...