Haifeng Huang

If it makes you feel any better, I left my keys in my Vancouver APSA hotel. I paid to have them shipped to me.

To be sure, foreign opinions of China are not always fair or based on accurate information. But recognizing one's image is the first step in improving that image, and it will be valuable in achieving the nation's long-sought goal of "peaceful rise." 大不自多，海纳江河

Excessive national overconfidence has both domestic and international consequences, but it has rarely been systematically studied. The findings show that overconfidence is prevalent in a rising authoritarian power but it can be meaningfully corrected, and triumphalism mitigated.

These results are not confined to the Covid-19 period. Overconfidence is also present in a post-pandemic survey with Chinese international students in the US, albeit to a lesser degree. Information corrections also affects their political evaluations and attitudes.

Information corrections also change people's perceptions of how foreign publics think about China, for example, making them realize that the first thing Americans think of when it comes to China is most often human rights.

Information correction has even bigger effects on people's factual perceptions of the country's global reputation, even in new questions not originally corrected. The correction effects appear broad and genuine rather than mechanical.

Critically, informing Chinese citizens of actual international public opinion about China changes their evaluations of the country, its governing system, and their expectations for its global role. These effects from simple corrections are durable for at least 2-4 weeks.

Using two studies conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic and an additional post-pandemic study, I show that the Chinese public widely and significantly overestimates China's global reputation and soft power (as compared to actual global polls), even during a national crisis.

New paper: "Reckoning with Reality: Correcting National Overconfidence in a Rising Power" accepted at International Organization ssrn.com/abstract=397... Do people in a rising authoritarian power overestimate their nation's power & attraction, and can overconfidence be corrected?

Laws and authority A law prohibiting a particular behavior does not directly change the payoff to an individual should he engage in the prohibited behavior. Rather, any …

An under-rated and under-cited paper in the same spirit: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

When will you be in HZ？

Thanks, Christian.

Congrats to SAIS!

Electoral Competition When Some Candidates Lie and Others Pander - Haifeng Huang, 2010 In this paper we analyze a two-candidate electoral competition in which a candidate can either lie about his private policy preference in order to get elected, ...

This article of mine has a brief review of the formal literature on the issue: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... (shameless self-promotion). There might be a newer literature on valence that's also relevant.

Electoral Competition When Some Candidates Lie and Others Pander - Haifeng Huang, 2010 In this paper we analyze a two-candidate electoral competition in which a candidate can either lie about his private policy preference in order to get elected, ...

This article of mine has a brief review of the formal literature on the issue: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... (shameless self-promotion). There might be a newer literature on valence that's also relevant.