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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | McCain , Roger (School of Economics LeBow College of Business Drexel University) |
| Abstract: | It seems that decisions in many voting bodies might be described by a two-stage decision in which the first stage is a bargaining process and the second is a vote that is often a formality. This does not mean that the voting is irrelevant, but, rather, that it limits the threats that may be made and so influences bargaining power at the first stage. We will explore a two-stage game in which the first stage is a bargaining process and the game terminates if there is an agreement, while at the second stage, if there is no agreement at the first stage, a contested election is held to determine the joint strategy of the body. Bargaining power at the first stage is attributed to minimum winning coalitions in the possible second stage election. In an idealization of such a two-stage game, majority groups have equal bargaining power, and nonmajority groups have none. This paper uses a recent extension of bargaining theory that attributes bargaining power to groups as well as individuals and assumes that a minimum winning voting bloc has bargaining power one and other groups and individuals have bargaining power zero. For TU games, this yields a striking rule for the bargaining solution: the surplus generated by the coalition is either distributed as equal payouts, or distributed among the members with lesser individual rationality constraints, so that their payouts are equal, while others get their individual rationality constraints. In the tradition of cooperative game theory, we assume that the bargaining is successful and explicitly consider only the bargaining stage. In a digression, a model of a business enterprise as a TU game is developed, and the voting model is applied to contrast decisions in a worker cooperative (which makes decisions on the basis of majority rule among the employee members) with for-profit corporations and other organizational forms. |
| Keywords: | voting; cooperative games; bargaining |
| JEL: | C71 C78 D72 |
| Date: | 2013–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:drxlwp:2013_009&r=cdm |
| By: | Baskaran, Thushyanthan |
| Abstract: | I study whether bailouts of local governments carry electoral benefits for state governments with a dataset covering 421 municipalities in the German state of Hesse over the period 1999-2011. I find that past bailouts have no economically significant effect on the municipality-level vote share of the parties that formed the state government in subsequent state elections. On the other hand, bailouts lead to vote increases for the ruling parties in subsequent local elections. On balance, these results suggest that electoral concerns are not the reason why central governments find it difficult to commit to a no-bailout policy. |
| Keywords: | Subnational bailouts, state-level elections, local fiscal policy |
| JEL: | D72 H30 H74 H77 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:48228&r=cdm |
| By: | Andrei Govorun (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Israel Marques (National Research University Higher School of Economics); William Pyle (Economics Department, Middlebury College) |
| Abstract: | How does political competition shape the way that firms pursue legislative change? A rich political economy literature describes various ways in which firms influence the design and enforcement of laws, rules and regulations germane to their business activities. Although helpful, this literature is disconnected from work on legislative accountability and political concentration. Making a distinction poorly developed in prior research, we contrast firms that choose to influence policy directly, through un-mediated contacts with executive and legislative branch personnel, and those that do so indirectly, through lobby groups acting as intermediaries. We propose a simple theory that relates the relative costs of lobbying and the strategies firms select to the extent of political competition and concentration. As competition increases and concentration decreases in a region, the use of indirect channels of lobbying becomes more attractive (and vice versa). We test our theory using a survey of 1013 firms across 61 Russian regions. Exploiting substantial variation in political competition and concentration across Russia’s regions, we find that firms in politically competitive environments, where there is less concentration, are more likely to use business associations to influence their institutional environment. Using a survey of 315 business associations, we show that these effects may be explained by the variation of the willingness of regional decision-making officials to support more or less encompassing policies depending on local political environment |
| Keywords: | lobbying, democratic institutions, business associations, Russia |
| JEL: | D71 D72 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:46/ec/2013&r=cdm |
| By: | Konstantin Yanovskiy (Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy); Sergey Zhavoronkov (Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy); Ilia Zatcovecky (Samuel Neaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology); Ekaterina Kudryavceva (Samuel Neaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology) |
| Abstract: | “Improvements” in the mechanisms of democracy for making decisions about providing taxpayer-financed public goods can lead the economy in the same direction as authoritarianism. Such a by-product may be insignificant, but, even if so, a tradition of abridging democracy, similarly to an authoritarian tradition of long standing, can lend itself to correction only with great difficulty. There is a series of countries in which the dominance of one party during certain historical periods seemed quite obvious: Japan (1955-1993, but in fact, after a brief break, until 2009), Mexico (1929-2000), Italy (1947-1993), Sweden (1932-1976, as well as 20 out of the 23 years between 1982-2005), Israel (1948-1977), India (until 1977, 1980-1989, 1991-1998, i.e., for practically 46 out of 50 years the country was ruled by a single group), Botswana, and others. Tendencies of placing constraints on competition in the mass media by means of taxpayer financing of propaganda in favor of the position of very certain groups and coalitions are international. Today they have spread throughout most democratic countries of the world. This is a situation in which words about “protecting” the competition may imply eliminating it (as, for example, in Israel). Weakening of political and media competition causes weakening of guarantees for property rights; lowering of the transparency of the state, its responsibility and accountability to the electorate and to the taxpayers; Increase in opportunities for deriving revenues for interests groups, and limiting of opportunities (increase in costs) for coordination of steps to be taken by the population so as to protect their own rights and legal interests.. |
| Keywords: | media market, public TV, political competition, property rights |
| JEL: | D72 D73 D78 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gai:wpaper:0077&r=cdm |
| By: | Choi, Laura (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco) |
| Abstract: | The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, launched the “Healthy Communities” initiative in 2010 to explore how the health and community development sectors can collaborate. A regional meeting took place in Las Vegas in January 2012, which led to the formation of the Las Vegas Healthy Communities Coalition (LVHCC), a collective impact initiative with a mission to “foster collaboration and coordination across multiple sectors and stakeholders, to generate healthy outcomes for all Southern Nevadans.” This report details the formation and progress of LVHCC, which is still in the early stages of development. Unlike other case studies, which often report on an initiative’s success after many years of careful planning and implementation, this study aims to provide a candid look at the challenging and emergent nature of cross-sector collaboration in progress. It is meant to shed light on specific challenges and lessons that have been learned in Las Vegas thus far in order to help other communities that have embarked on their own community collaboratives. |
| Date: | 2013–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedfcw:2013-07&r=cdm |
| By: | Persson, Petra (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)) |
| Abstract: | When a decision-maker’s attention is limited, her decisions depend on what she focuses on. This gives interested parties an incentive to manipulate not only the substance of communication but also the decision-maker’s attention allocation. This paper models such attention manipulation. In its presence, competitive information supply can reduce the decision-maker’s knowledge by causing information overload. Further, a single information provider may deliberately induce information overload to conceal information. These findings, pertinent to consumer protection, suggest a role for rules that restrict communication, mandate not only the content but also the format of disclosure, and regulate product design. |
| Keywords: | Communication; Information Overload; Limited Attention; Persuasion; Disclosure; Complexity; Consumer Protection; Salience |
| JEL: | D18 D82 D83 M38 |
| Date: | 2013–12–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0995&r=cdm |
| By: | Konstantin Yanovskiy (Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy); Sergey Zhavoronkov (Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy); Dmitry Shestakov (Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy) |
| Abstract: | The link between an introduction of the universal suffrage and the growth of government spending has been established in some literature (Meltzer, Richard, 1981, Aidt et al., 2006, Funk and Guthmann, 2006). In this article we try to identify a more detailed mechanism behind that link. So, we addressed to the conflict of interest of bureaucrats, and of the state subsidy beneficiaries. Historically the growth of government spending might be traced to the emergence of mainstream left parties, which openly stood in favor of the nanny state and government help from the cradle to the grave[1] as a priority over the provision of pure public goods. Finally we check the hypothesis that the growth of government care correlates with the chronic illnesses of the modern state finance like budget deficit, state debt and inflation. |
| Keywords: | Universal Suffrage; Left parties; Budget Deficit; Conflict of Interest. |
| JEL: | D72 D73 H62 N40 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gai:wpaper:0078&r=cdm |
| By: | Maria Lusiani (Dept. of Management, Università Ca' Foscari Venice); Ann Langley (Dept. of Management, HEC MontrŽal) |
| Abstract: | Many contemporary organizations claim to be moving towards forms of increased inclusion and transparency in the strategy formulation and communication processes. This paper explores how organizations can enable wide participation in strategy making while keeping a coherent strategic direction. In particular, it investigates how strategizing takes place in professional, pluralistic contexts, supposedly characterized by open participation in strategymaking. Drawing on a strategy-as-practice perspective and on a case study of an Italian public hospital that introduced a new participatory planning system, it focuses on how professionals participated in strategy work and the tools they drew on to do so. The study shows how professionalsÕ empowerment is likely to be subject to managerial endorsement and how the simultaneous opening up and holding together of strategy may be accomplished through the boundary spanning activities of planning officers and the channelling and organizing roles of formal planning tools. These findings contribute to an understanding of how distributed strategizing occurs in professional settings and how Ôopen strategyÕ may play out in organizations more generally. |
| Keywords: | Strategizing; Professionals; Strategy as practice; Planning; Open strategy; Pluralistic settings. |
| JEL: | M10 |
| Date: | 2013–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:vnm:wpdman:68&r=cdm |
| By: | Breitmoser, Yves; Tan, Jonathan H.W. |
| Abstract: | In view of behavioral patterns left unorganized by current social preference theories, we propose a theory of reference dependent altruism (RDA). With RDA, one's degree of altruism increases at reference points. It induces equity and efficiency effects that are conditional on whether or not payoffs meet reference points. We verify the theory first by experimentally analyzing majority bargaining, where observed behavior contradicts existing theories but confirms RDA. Using parameter estimates from majority bargaining, we then make out-of-sample predictions for Charness-Rabin, Engelmann-Strobel, and Bolton-Ockenfels games. RDA organizes these seemingly disparate games out-of-sample, which validates our hypothesis that pro-social behavior primarily relates to reference points. |
| Keywords: | bargaining, non-cooperative game, laboratory experiment, social preferences, quantal response equilibrium |
| JEL: | C72 C78 D72 |
| Date: | 2014–01–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:52774&r=cdm |
| By: | Molina, Oscar; Miguélez, Fausto |
| Keywords: | social dialogue, collective bargaining, labour relations, economic recession, Spain, dialogue social, négociation collective, relations de travail, récession économique, Espagne, diálogo social, negociación colectiva, relaciones laborales, recesión económica, España |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ilo:ilowps:483344&r=cdm |
| By: | Ghanbari, Amirhossein; Markendahl, Jan; Widaa, Ashraf Awadelakrim |
| Abstract: | Cooperation and collaboration with either competitors and/or other actors in the ecosystem seems to become a relevant method for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) in order to decrease costs and boost revenues at the same time. But, there are always risks and imperfections in front of such models such as losing control over network, empowering existing or potential competitors and unwillingness to contribute evenly in different cases with other actors. In this paper we discuss possible cooperation patterns for indoor smallcell networks, adopted from successful cooperation patterns in macro cellular networks. This is done by analyzing three main areas: Deployment of smallcells, sharing strategies and outsourcing. Based on the works done in this field, an intersection of these three areas is missing that is studying possible cooperation patterns with all possible actors (operators, third parties and Facility owners) of shared smallcell networks. The aim of this paper is to see how it is possible to enable cases where all involved actors benefit from the cooperation pattern, by looking into existing solutions as well as proposing new patterns that a multitude of actors may be willing to adopt. Since there is no distinct answer for such a question, the proposed Wholesale model or Comprehensive system helps mobile operators to rethink about smallcell specific business models. This investigation enables distinguishing between revenue-efficient and cost-efficient smallcell network deployments for both operators and other investors. -- |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:itse13:88465&r=cdm |