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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Ambrus, Attila; Greiner, Ben; Zednik, Anita |
| Abstract: | We investigate how voter and political candidate behavior and election results are affected by an explicit blank vote option “None of the above” (NOTA) on the ballot paper. We report evidence from two online survey experiments conducted in the weeks preceding the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election and the 2016 Austrian run-off election for President. We subjected participants either to the original ballot paper or to a manipulated ballot paper where we added a NOTA option. We find that introducing a NOTA option on the ballot increases participation and reduces the vote shares of non-establishment candidates. NOTA is chosen more frequently by voters with a protest motive, who are either unhappy with the candidate set or with the political establishment in general. Using a laboratory experiment we further explore the reaction of political candidates to the existence of a NOTA option. We replicate our field evidence that NOTA diverts votes from a protest option (e.g. an inferior candidate or policy), thus decreasing the likelihood that the protest option actually wins. However, (establishment) candidates anticipate this shift and become more likely to make unfair policy proposals when NOTA is present. As a result, a NOTA option on the ballot in our laboratory setting improves efficiency but increases inequality. |
| Keywords: | protest voting, expressive voting |
| Date: | 2020–03–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wus055:7522&r=all |
| By: | Anand, Kartik; Gai, Prasanna; König, Philipp Johann |
| Abstract: | Why do politicians sometimes pursue policies with uncertain outcomes? We present a model in which politicians are unable to pre-commit to a status quo policy, and where investors and voters face a conflict over the division of output. Politicians may deviate from the status quo and pursue risky policy gambles in order to raise aggregate output to satisfy voters. These policy gambles may have a "populist" and self-fulfilling flavour: they can command electoral support despite being against voters' best interests. We analyse how consensus-building institutions eliminate the gamble equilibrium and enhance voter welfare. We interpret the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union through the lens of the model. |
| Keywords: | policy gambles,policy uncertainty,multiple equilibria,economic populism,Brexit |
| JEL: | D72 D78 P16 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:bubdps:072020&r=all |
| By: | Tushar Bharati (Economics Discipline, Business School, University of Western Australia) |
| Abstract: | The paper introduces an asymmetric information candidate choice model to examine the inefficiencies arising from co-ethnic political preferences. Unlike past theoretical literature on the topic, political parties in the model internalize co-ethnic political preferences of voters and act strategically. The model predicts that a party’s choice to field a candidate of an ethnicity type depends on the ethnic composition of the constituency’s voters and the ethnicity of other rival candidates running for office. Data from parliamentary and assembly elections from the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in India support the model predictions. Using exogenous changes in information flow proxied by geographical connectedness via all-weather roads, I show that lower information cost or greater connectedness implies a lower level of strategic differentiation of candidates along ethnic lines. Evidence suggests that parties disregard potential candidate’s involvement in crime to be able to differentiate along ethnic lines. As a result, worse candidates get elected to office. |
| Keywords: | elections; ethnic voting; political parties; crime |
| JEL: | D7 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uwa:wpaper:20-05&r=all |
| By: | Andrea Bonoldi; Chiara Dalle Nogare; Martin Mosler; Niklas Potrafke |
| Abstract: | We examine the relationship between inheritance rules and voter turnout. Inheritance rules are measured by entailed farms in South Tyrol: land properties whose inheritance is regulated by a law similar to the right of primogeniture. Using data for municipalities between 1998 and 2010, we show that voter turnout is high in municipalities with many entailed farms relative to population. The effect is based on local elections. If the number of entailed farms per 100 inhabitants increases by one standard deviation, voting turnout in municipal and provincial elections increases by around 1.27 and 1.43 percentage points (around 25 and 35 percent of a standard deviation). Our results suggest that entailed farm owners themselves are more likely to vote, and that entailed farms owners encourage other citizens of their municipality to participate in local elections. |
| Keywords: | Entailed farms, voter turnout, inheritance rules, identity, civic duty |
| JEL: | D72 H70 K11 Q15 Z19 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ifowps:_324&r=all |
| By: | Mathieu Lefebvre; Lucie Martin-Bonnel de Longchamp |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a lab-in-the-field experiment with craftsmen working on renovation projects to assess the effect of training programs and incentive scheme on coordination and cooperation. Workers frequently fail to cooperate and coordinate their tasks when not supervised by a project coordinator. This is particularly important in the construction sector where it leads to a lack of final performance in buildings. We introduce two different incentives: a first contract paying craftsmen only according to their individual performance, and a second contract paying a group of three craftsmen with a weak-link payment according to the group’s worst performance. In addition, we test these incentives on two different subject groups: one is composed of craftsmen trained to coordinate their tasks, and the others are not. The results suggest that trained subjects coordinate at significantly higher effort levels than non-trained subjects when facing an individual-based incentive. However, when facing a group-based incentive, non-trained subjects seem to "catch up" trained subjects in terms of coordination level, while these latter subjects do not significantly increase their performance level. |
| Keywords: | Coordination, Real-effort weak-link experiment, Semi-Field Experiment, Individual Incentive, Group Incentive. |
| JEL: | C01 C91 C92 C93 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2020-09&r=all |
| By: | Duk Gyoo Kim (Univ of Mannheim); Sang-Hyun Kim (Yonsei Univ) |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the competition to be selected as the proposer in a subsequent multilateral bargaining game experimentally. The experimental environment varies in two dimensions: reservation payoffs (homogeneous or heterogeneous) and information on the extent of each subject’s investment in the competition (public or private). The proposer’s share was significantly lower than what theory predicts, and with taking into account the proposer’s partial rent extraction, subjects over-invest to increase their chances of winning the right of proposal. More importantly, we find that inefficiency (due to the levels of spending) and inequality go hand in hand; the surplus was distributed most efficiently and most equally when the reservation payoffs were heterogeneous, and subjects were informed of who had spent how much in the competition. The proportion of proposals being rejected was smaller in public treatments than in private treatments. This study contributes to the literature by identifying formal rules that are more effective in establishing efficient informal norms. |
| Keywords: | Multilateral bargaining, Contest, Public choice, Laboratory experiments |
| JEL: | C72 C92 D72 |
| Date: | 2019–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yon:wpaper:2020rwp-168&r=all |
| By: | Mantilla, Cesar; Alberti, Federica |
| Abstract: | We study the provision of a public project that globally behaves as a public good but locally behaves as a private bad. This scenario imposes two problems: (i) finding a compensation that makes the project acceptable for the pre-determined host, and (ii) securing the budget to pay for the project and the required compensation. We use a market-like mechanism with two useful properties for this scenario: players can either contribute or request subsidies to fund the public project, and players have veto power over the desired project quantity. In our game, two players benefit from a waste incinerator facility, whereas the third group member, the host, is harmed if the facility is too large. We analyze the efficiency and the re-distributive potential of this mechanism, with and without communication, among group members. We find that the probability of positive provision did not differ with and without communication. However, average provided quantities with respect to the efficient quantity increased from 54% to 81% with communication. We also find that contributions fell below the Lindahl taxes, allowing the players who benefit from a larger facility to accrue most of the efficiency gains. The latter result is consistent with the infrequent evidence of veto threats as a bargaining strategy. |
| Date: | 2020–03–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:5qtac&r=all |
| By: | Anatoliy Kostruba (Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University) |
| Abstract: | Nature of a legal person is exhausted by a transformation of exclusively individual properties of a natural person. A legal person is not able to create a new fiction individually. A transformation of an individuality of a legal person leads to a creation of solely known fiction – another legal person. This way, having a certain level of individuality, a legal person realizes his/her will of a founder. It is deprived of a personal natural will and consciousness, which might be transformed into a «body» of a principally new, different from a legal person, subject of the right An association of legal persons leads to a creation of a new legal person. Its functioning in a civilian circulation is realized through known legal organizational forms of corporations. In a result of association of legal persons, there won't be a deformation of neither organizational structure nor of a structure of a legal person which is in the process of creation. Such an association of legal persons, according to the grounds of its appearance, receives a statutory form of preservation. From another side, the consolidation process of legal may not be accompanied by a creation of a legal person. Such a consolidation of legal persons is exercised on the base of a contractual construction of a simple partnership (another common activity). Correspondent associations don't have a status of a legal person, they are not invested by a separate property, but being a structure of a system management, they receive full powers for control of respecting the association's corporate interests. The difference of a stated from the first version consists in a degree of self-sufficiency of participants as well as regarding a legal result of such an association. In a result of the integration process implementation, relations are established between its participants, that is, a certain corporate structure is formed, which we call integrated. A model for organization of legal relations between legal persons in their group is a concern, consortium, association, union etc. Such models are a means of legal technology, which confirm the complex of relations between the participants of a corresponding group. The indicated models are not a legal person. According to a legal nature of relations inside the group, a legal bound appears, the form of which is an agreement of common activity, as specified above. |
| Keywords: | Corporation law,Corporations,Partnership governance,Partnership and cooperation agreements,Partnership ability,Corporation américaine |
| Date: | 2020–02–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02494711&r=all |
| By: | Rabah Amir (University of Iowa [Iowa City]); Hend Ghazzai (UR MASE - Modélisation et Analyse Statistique et Economique - ESSAIT - Ecole Supérieure de la Statistique et de l'Analyse de l'Information - Université de Carthage - University of Carthage); Rim Lahmandi-Ayed (LEGI - Laboratoire d'Économie et de Gestion Industrielle [Tunis] - Ecole Polytechnique de Tunisie) |
| Abstract: | We consider a general equilibrium model with vertical preferences for one good and two identical countries each having initially one firm. Citizens in each country are asked to vote either for openness or for autarky. Openness means that a foreign firm can sell and produce its product in the domestic country and that the domestic firm can sell and produce its product in the foreign country. The decision to open frontiers is effective only when it is bilateral. Citizens in each country are potentially consumers, workers and shareholders in the domestic firm. They differ with respect to their intensity of preference for quality and their sensitivity to effort. The regime which will prevail between countries corresponds to the majority vote in the low quality country, as we prove that citizens in the high quality country always vote for openness. The outcome thus depends in a complex way on the degree of concentration of the ownership structure in the low quality country and the relative dispersion of the citizens with respect to their intensity of preference for quality and their sensitivity to effort. |
| Keywords: | Globalization,Democracy,Owner- ship Structure,General Equilibrium,Vertical Preferences |
| Date: | 2020–03–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-02506064&r=all |