New Economics Papers
on Collective Decision-Making
Issue of 2012‒11‒03
five papers chosen by
  1. Bounded Rationality and Voting Decisions Exploring a 160-Year Period By David Stadelmann; Benno Torgler
  2. Ordered Weighted Averaging in Social Networks. By Manuel Förster; Michel Grabisch; Agnieszka Rusinowska
  3. Occupation-specific immigration quotas in political equilibrium By Karin Mayr
  4. Asking One Too Many? Why Leaders Need to Be Decisive By Junichiro Ishida; Takashi Shimizu
  5. Why Countries Matter for Monetary Policy Decision-Making in the ESCB By Bernd Hayo; Pierre-Guillaume Méon
  1. By: David Stadelmann (University of Fribourg, Department of Economics, CREMA—Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts); Benno Torgler (School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology, EBS Universität für Wirtschaft und Recht, EBS Business School, CREMA—Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts)
    Abstract: Using a natural voting experiment in Switzerland that encompasses a 160-year period (1848–2009), we investigate whether a higher level of complexity leads to increased reliance on expert knowledge. We find that when more referenda are held on the same day, constituents are more likely to refer to parliamentary recommendations in making their decisions. This finding holds true even when we narrow our focus to referenda with a relatively lower voter turnout on days on which more than one referendum was held. We also show that when constituents face a higher level of complexity, they listen to parliament rather than interest groups.
    Keywords: Bounded Rationality, Voting, Referenda Attention, Rules of Thumb
    JEL: D03 D72 D83 H70
    Date: 2012–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fem:femwpa:2012.70&r=cdm
  2. By: Manuel Förster (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne & Université Catholique de Louvain - CORE); Michel Grabisch (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne - Paris School of Economics); Agnieszka Rusinowska (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne - Paris School of Economics)
    Abstract: We study a stochastic model of influence where agents have yes-no inclinations on some issue, and opinions may change due to mutual influence among the agents. Each agent independently aggregates the opinions of the other agents and possibly herself. We study influence processes modelled by ordered weighted averaging operators. This allows to study situations where the influence process resembles a majority vote, which are not covered by the classical approach of weighted averaging aggregation. We provide an analysis of the speed of convergence and the probabilities of absoption by different terminal classes. We find a necessary and sufficient condition for convergence to consensus and characterize terminal states. Our results can also be used to understand more general situations, where ordered weighted averaging operators are only used to some extend. Furthermore, we apply our results to fuzzy linguistic quantifiers.
    Keywords: Social network, influence, convergence, speed of convergence, consensus, ordered weighted averaging operator, fuzzy linguistic quantifier.
    JEL: C7 D7 D85
    Date: 2012–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mse:cesdoc:12056&r=cdm
  3. By: Karin Mayr
    Abstract: Immigration policies are generally protectionist, yet positive immigration quotas often exist for workers in specic occupations where the native labor supply is scarce. This paper determines occupation-specic immigration quotas in a political economy framework with endogenous prices and compares them to the social optimum. It shows that positive quotas for specic occupations can be the political outcome, even when total welfare eects of immigration are negative. Two of the main ndings are that the (unique) voting outcome on immigration quotas is i) positive, if workers are immobile across occupations, and ii) negative (positive) for occupations where the native labor supply is suciently large (small), if workers are mobile across occupations.
    JEL: F22 D72 J31
    Date: 2012–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:vie:viennp:1207&r=cdm
  4. By: Junichiro Ishida; Takashi Shimizu
    Abstract: It is often touted that decisiveness is one of the most important qualities to be possessed by leaders, broadly defined. To see how and why decisiveness can be a valuable asset in organizations, we construct a model of strategic information transmission where: (i) a decision maker solicits opinions sequentially from experts; (ii) how many experts to solicit opinions from is the decision maker's endogenous choice. We show that communication is less efficient when the decision maker is indecisive and cannot resist the temptation to ask for a second opinion. This result suggests that the optimal diversity of information sources depends critically on the strategic nature of communication: when communication is strategic, it is optimal to delegate information acquisition to a single party and rely exclusively on it; when it is not, it is optimal to diversify information sources and aggregate them via communication.
    Date: 2012–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dpr:wpaper:0857&r=cdm
  5. By: Bernd Hayo; Pierre-Guillaume Méon
    Keywords: European Central Bank, Monetary Policy Committee, Decision rules
    Date: 2012–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/130369&r=cdm
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