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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Kirill Zhirkov (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | In the present study I use spatial voting model to assess the importance of the left-right and immigration issue dimensions on electoral behavior in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. My findings indicate that distances between parties and voters on both left-right and immigration dimensions do significantly influence voting choice in all three countries, although effect of the latter is substantially lower. I also demonstrate that voting for the niche parties, and especially for the radical right, is much stronger related to the immigration issue than voting for the mainstream parties, both center-left and center-right ones. Finally, my analysis demonstrates that positional spatial voting model shows a good degree of stability even under imperfect measurement of policy preferences. In conclusion, I discuss implications of my findings for the research on new political issues and niche parties |
| Keywords: | spatial voting, left-right, immigration, Scandinavia |
| JEL: | Z |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:12/ps/2014&r=cdm |
| By: | Tomassi, Federico |
| Abstract: | In city districts in Rome, social and economic inequalities between centre and peripheral belts have been increasing over the last years, in parallel to the on-going suburban sprawl. Electoral data from 2000 to 2013 highlight sharp political polarization too. Votes for left-wing (right-wing) candidates are directly (inversely) proportional to proximity to Capitoline Hill. Left-wing coalition prevails where social centrality exists, that is in dense districts with widespread social relationships and many public or collective places. Conversely, right-wing parties prevail in far-off sprawled areas, with less opportunities to meet each other, where production and consumption of relational goods are less likely. Since such goods – according to scholars of civil economics – foster individual well-being and local development, they also affect political choices, challenging the so-called traditional ‘red belt’ in working-class districts until the 1980s. |
| Keywords: | City planning; commons; elections; Italy; relational goods; social capital |
| JEL: | H41 R14 Z13 |
| Date: | 2014–05–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:56227&r=cdm |
| By: | Dr Alex Bryson |
| Abstract: | Across countries, union membership and voter turnout are highly correlated. In unadjusted terms union members maintain a roughly 0.10 to 0.12 point gap in voting propensity over non-members. We propose a model – with three causal channels -- that explains this correlation and then empirically tests for the contribution of each channel to the overall union voting gap. The first channel by which union members are more likely to vote is through the so-called “monopoly-face” of unionism whereby unions increase wages for members and higher incomes are a significant positive determinant of voting. The second is the “social custom” model of unionism whereby co-worker peer pressure creates incentives for union members to vote alongside fellow members. The third channel is based on the “voice-face” of unionism whereby employees who are (or have been) exposed to collective bargaining and union representation at the workplace are also more likely to increase their attachment to democratic engagement in society at large. We test to see how much of the raw “union voting gap” is accounted for by these three competing channels using data from 29 European countries. We find that all three channels are at work, with voice accounting for half of the overall gap and the other two channels (monopoly and social custom) each accounting for about a quarter of the overall union voting gap. |
| Date: | 2014–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nsr:niesrd:11858&r=cdm |
| By: | Klarizze Anne Puzon; Marc Willinger |
| Abstract: | We analyze an institutionalized rent-seeking game in which groups can endogenously choose the prize at stake, e.g. a common-pool resource. In the first stage, groups determine how much of the resource to protect and equally share. In the second stage, the unprotected fraction is competed for in a rent-seeking game. We consider two institutions varying in the extent by which subjects participate: majority voting (i.e. "unrestrained participation" where all group members participate in the protection stage) and dictatorial rule (i.e. "limited participation" where only one member decides in the protection stage) [...] |
| Date: | 2014–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lam:wpaper:14-05&r=cdm |
| By: | Lauren Larrouy (University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France; GREDEG CNRS) |
| Abstract: | The paper purports to stress how the two major contributions of Bacharach: "Variable Frame Theory" (VFT) and "Team Reasoning" (TR) improve Standard Non-Cooperative Game Theory in some relevant aspects which I point out. The aims are to show: (i) how Bacharach respectively justifies coordination and cooperation within these theories, and (ii) how these improvements in both VFT and TR involve a new conception of players and their rationality. I underline how coordination and cooperation rely on contextual and social determinants, which challenge and even contradict some pillars of standard individual rationality in terms of subjective expected utility, in games. Even if Bacharach's conceptual and methodological choices within these theories induce numerous difficulties, I try to show that Bacharach’s work underlines some of the implications and related problems induced by the mere foundations of standard non-cooperation game theory. |
| Keywords: | non-cooperative game theory, framing, salience, focal points, Team Reasoning, coordination, cooperation, individual rationality, social rationality, collective rationality |
| JEL: | B21 B41 C72 D03 D79 |
| Date: | 2014–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2014-17&r=cdm |
| By: | Haoran He (School of Economics and Business Administration - Beijing Normal University / Beijing); Marie Claire Villeval (GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - CNRS : UMR5824 - Université Lumière - Lyon II - École Normale Supérieure (ENS) - Lyon - PRES Université de Lyon - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Etienne - Université Claude Bernard - Lyon I (UCBL)) |
| Abstract: | We compare inequality aversion in individuals and teams by means of both within- and between-subject experimental designs, and we investigate how teams aggregate individual preferences. We find that team decisions reveal less inequality aversion than individual initial proposals in team decision-making. However, teams are no more selfish than individuals who decide in isolation. Individuals express strategically more inequality aversion in their initial proposals in team decision-making because they anticipate the selfishness of other members. Members with median social preferences drive team decisions. Finally, we show that social image has little influence because guilt and envy are almost similar in anonymous and non-anonymous interactions. |
| Keywords: | Team; inequity aversion; preference aggregation; social image; experiment |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00996545&r=cdm |
| By: | Michael W.M. Roos; Andreas Orland |
| Abstract: | This paper reports the results of a questionnaire study used to explore the economic understanding, normative positions along the egalitarian-libertarian spectrum, and the party preferences of a large student sample. The aim of the study is both to find socio-economic determinants of normative and positive beliefs and to explore how beliefs about the economy influence party support. We find that positive beliefs of lay people differ systematically from those of economic experts. Positive beliefs can be explained by high school grades, field of study, reasons for the choice of subject, personality traits, and – in part – by gender. Normative beliefs are self-serving in the sense that students whose father have high-status jobs and who seek high incomes are more libertarian than others. Party preferences are explained by the professional status of the father, religion, gender, and economic beliefs. Normative beliefs are more important for party support than positive beliefs. While there is a clear positive relation between libertarianism and support for right-leaning parties, positive beliefs only matter for some parties. A parochialism bias in positive beliefs seems to reinforce libertarian views favoring the most conservative party. |
| Keywords: | Economic beliefs; party preference; sociotropic voting; pocketbook voting; survey; personality traits |
| JEL: | D83 D72 Z13 |
| Date: | 2014–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rwi:repape:0483&r=cdm |
| By: | Lars EHLERS |
| Abstract: | We consider general allocation problems with indivisibilities where agents' preferences possibly exhibit externalities. In such contexts many different core notions were proposed. One is the -core whereby blocking is only allowed via allocations where the non-blocking agents receive their endowment. We show that if there exists an allocation rule satisfying individual rationality, efficiency, and strategy-proofness, then for any problem for which the -core is non-empty, the allocation rule must choose a -core allocation and all agents are indifferent between all allocations in the -core. We apply our result to housing markets, coalition formation and networks. |
| Keywords: | General allocation problems, externalities, strategy-proofness, -core. |
| JEL: | C78 D61 D78 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mtl:montec:05-2014&r=cdm |
| By: | Boncinelli, Leonardo; Pin, Paolo |
| Abstract: | We analyze a team formation process that generalizes matching models and network formation models, allowing for overlapping teams of heterogeneous size. We apply different notions of stability: myopic team-wise stability, which extends to our setup the concept of pair-wise stability, coalitional stability, where agents are perfectly rational and able to coordinate, and stochastic stability, where agents are myopic and errors occur with vanishing probability. We find that, in many cases, coalitional stability in no way refines myopic team-wise stability, while stochastically stable states are feasible states that maximize the overall number of activities performed by teams. |
| Keywords: | team formation; stochastic stability; coalitional stability; networks; marriage theorem. |
| JEL: | C72 C73 D85 H41 |
| Date: | 2014–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:56356&r=cdm |
| By: | Boris Hirsch; Christian Merkl; Steffen Müller; Claus Schnabel |
| Abstract: | This paper is the first to show theoretically and empirically how firms' production technology affects the choice of their preferred wage formation regime. Our theoretical framework predicts, first, that the larger the total factor productivity of a firm, the more likely it is to opt for centralized wage formation where it can hide behind less productive firms. Second, the larger a firm's scale elasticity, the higher its incentive to choose centralized rather than decentralized wage setting due to labor cost and straitjacket effects. As firms in Germany are allowed to choose their wage formation regime, we test these two hypotheses with representative establishment data for West Germany. We find that establishments with centralized bargaining agreements indeed have economically and statistically significantly larger total factor productivities and scale elasticities than comparable establishments outside the centralized bargaining regime. |
| Keywords: | wage formation, bargaining, bargaining coverage, Germany |
| JEL: | J50 J30 J41 |
| Date: | 2014–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kie:kieliw:1927&r=cdm |
| By: | Vessela Daskalova (University of Cambridge); Nicolaas J. Vriend (Queen Mary University of London) |
| Abstract: | The use of coarse categories is prevalent in various situations and has been linked to biased economic outcomes, ranging from discrimination against minorities to empirical anomalies in financial markets. In this paper we study economic rationales for categorizing coarsely. We think of the way one categorizes one's past experiences as a model of the world that is used to make predictions about unobservable attributes in new situations. We first show that coarse categorization may be optimal for making predictions in stochastic environments in which an individual has a limited number of past experiences. Building on this result, and this is a key new insight from our paper, we show formally that cases in which people have a motive to coordinate their predictions with others may provide an economic rationale for categorizing coarsely. Our analysis explains the intuition behind this rationale. |
| Keywords: | Categorization, Prediction, Decision-making, Coordination, Learning |
| JEL: | D83 C72 |
| Date: | 2014–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qmw:qmwecw:wp719&r=cdm |