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on Collective Decision-Making |
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Issue of 2005‒12‒20
four papers chosen by |
| By: | Andrew Austin |
| Abstract: | In September 1992 French voters in a national referendum approved the Maastrict Treaty, which instituted several provisions for closer European integration including creation of the Eurozone. This paper analyzes political and economic forces that affected French voters, and the links between the progress of European integration and changes in redistributive spending. Conventional wisdom ascribes the persistence of the Common Agricultural Program subsidies to the political power of farmers, although direct evidence of this has been sparse. The statistical analysis here finds that support for European integration is weaker, other things equal, in areas where farmers were most affected by the MacSharry reforms, which reduced some support prices and began the process of `decoupling' agricultural subsidies from production. Results also show previous support for European integration and pro-European politicians are correlated with stronger support for ratification, as are higher incomes and higher proportions of non-natives. The results are consistent with the view that European integration provides voters and taxpayers with a way to limit the influence of interest groups by shifting decisionmaking from a national to a supranational arena. |
| Keywords: | Referendum, agricultural subsidies, European integration, voting. |
| JEL: | H23 D72 |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cer:papers:wp281&r=cdm |
| By: | Justina A.V. Fischer |
| Abstract: | The deleterious impact of institutions of direct legislation on student performance found in studies for both the U.S. and Switzerland has raised the question of what its transmission channels are. For the U.S., an increase in the ratio of administrative to instructional spending and larger class sizes were observed, supporting the hypothesis of a Leviathan-like school administration. For Switzerland, using a cross-sectional time-series panel of sub-federal school expenditure and size of classes, no such effect is detected. This finding is in line with previous analyses in which efficiency gains in the provision of public goods for Switzerland have been found. |
| Keywords: | direct democracy, median voter, bureaucracy, public education |
| JEL: | H41 H72 I22 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1628&r=cdm |
| By: | Ron Holzman; Bezalel Peleg; Peter Sudholter |
| Abstract: | Let A be a finite set of m alternatives, let N be a finite set of n players and let R<sup>N</sup> be a profile of linear preference orderings on A of the players. Let u<sup>N</sup> be a profile of utility functions for R<sup>N</sup>. We define the NTU game V<sub>u<sup>N</sup></sub> that corresponds to simple majority voting, and investigate its Aumann-Davis-Maschler and Mas-Colell bargaining sets. The first bargaining set is nonempty for m <FONT FACE="Symbol">£</FONT> 3 and it may be empty for m <FONT FACE="Symbol">³</FONT> 4. However, in a simple probabilistic model, for fixed m, the probability that the Aumann-Davis-Maschler bargaining set is nonempty tends to one if n tends to infinity. The Mas-Colell bargaining set is nonempty for m <FONT FACE="Symbol">£</FONT> 5 and it may be empty for m <FONT FACE="Symbol">³</FONT> 6. Furthermore, it may be empty even if we insist that n be odd, provided that m is sufficiently large. Nevertheless, we show that the Mas-Colell bargaining set of any simple majority voting game derived from the k-th replication of R<sup>N</sup> is nonempty, provided that k <FONT FACE="Symbol">³</FONT> n + 2. |
| Keywords: | NTU game; voting game; majority rule; bargaining set |
| JEL: | C71 D71 |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:huj:dispap:dp410&r=cdm |
| By: | Thomas Jensen (Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen) |
| Abstract: | Studies in political science and psychology suggest that voters' perceptions of political positions depend on their personal views of the candidates. A voter who likes/dislikes a candidate will perceive his position as closer to/further from his own than it really is (projection). Clearly these effects should be most pronounced when candidate positions are ambiguous. Thus a generally well liked candidate will have an incentive to take an ambiguous position. In this paper we construct a simple model to see under which conditions this incentive survives in the strategic setting of electoral competition, even if voters dislike ambiguity per se. |
| Keywords: | electoral competition; ambiguity; voter perception; cognitive balance; projection |
| JEL: | D72 D83 C72 |
| Date: | 2005–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kud:kuiedp:0525&r=cdm |