|
on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Lin, Yu-Hsuan |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the impact of reciprocal altruistic attitudes on individual willingness to participate in a climate coalition with experimental evidences. The theoretical result suggested that the scope of the coalition’s formation could be enlarged by the participation of altruists. However, we found that a kind participant in the altruism test could behave unkindly to others in the public good game. Considering attitudes against reciprocal altruism, when participants thought they were being treated badly, they were more likely to join a coalition because of the threat of punishment. In contrast, when participants were noncritical to a coalition, such altruistic attitudes were insignificant to their decisions. This result implies that decisions in international conventions are not self-enforced. Overall, this study reveals that self-interest remains the key factor influencing individual participation in climate coalitions. Coalition formation can also be affected by reciprocal altruistic preferences. |
| Keywords: | social preference, experimental design, reciprocity, altruism, international environmental agreements |
| JEL: | C91 D64 H41 Q54 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:86494&r=cdm |
| By: | Gianmarco León; Lukas Kleine-Rueschkamp |
| Abstract: | We estimate the effects of political accountability on the selection of politicians when accountability mechanisms are prone to political capture. Using a comprehensive dataset that records characteristics of candidates for mayor in the last three local elections in Perú, and a close election sharp regression discontinuity design, we compare candidates running for mayor in districts where the incumbent was ousted from office through a recall referendum in the previous electoral term with those who run in districts where the recall referendum failed by a small margin. Candidates in municipalities where the incumbent was recalled are less educated, have less experience in elected offices and in the public sector, and are younger. These findings are consistent with a framework where potential candidates learn about an accountability mechanism which is prone to capture, distorting the main objectives of improving the quality of government, and instead discouraging high quality candidates to run. The negative selection of candidates is partially offset by voters, who elect the best politician out of a lower quality pool of candidates. |
| Keywords: | accountability, selection into Politics, Peru |
| JEL: | O10 D72 O53 D71 |
| Date: | 2018–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:1041&r=cdm |
| By: | Eric Kamwa (LC2S - Laboratoire Caribéen de Sciences Sociales - UAG - Université des Antilles et de la Guyane) |
| Abstract: | Under Approval Voting (AV), each voter just distinguishes the candidates he approves of from those appearing as unacceptable. The Preference Approval Voting (PAV) is a hybrid version of the approval voting first introduced by Brams and Sanver (2009). Under PAV, each voter ranks all the candidates and then indicates the ones he approves. In this paper, we provide analytical representations for the probability that PAV elects the Condorcet winner when she exists in three-candidate elections with large electorates. We also provide analytical representations for the probability that PAV elects the Condorcet loser. We perform our analysis by assuming the assumption of the Extended Impartial Culture. Under this assumption, it comes that AV seems to perform better than PAV on electing the Condorcet winner and that in most of the cases, PAV seems to be less likely to elect the Condorcet loser than AV. |
| Keywords: | Approval Voting,Ranking,Condorcet,Extended Impartial Culture,Probability |
| Date: | 2018–05–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-01786121&r=cdm |
| By: | Eric Kamwa (LC2S - Laboratoire Caribéen de Sciences Sociales - UAG - Université des Antilles et de la Guyane) |
| Abstract: | The Borda Effect, first introduced by Colman and Poutney (1978), occurs in a preference aggregation process using the Plurality rule if given the (unique) winner there is at least one loser that is preferred to the winner by a majority of the electorate. Colman and Poutney (1978) distinguished two forms of the Borda Effect:-the Weak Borda Effect describing a situation under which the unique winner of the Plurality rule is majority dominated by only one loser; and-the Strong Borda Effect under which the Plurality winner is majority dominated by each of the losers. The Strong Borda Effect is well documented in the literature as the Strong Borda Paradox. Colman and Poutney (1978) showed that the probability of the Weak Borda Effect is not negligible; they only focused on the Plurality rule. In this note, we extend the work of Colman and Poutney (1978) by providing in three-candidate elections, the representations for the limiting probabilities of the (Weak) Borda Effect for the whole family of the scoring rules and scoring runoff rules. We highlight that there is a relation between the (Weak) Borda Effect and the Condorcet efficiency. We perform our analysis under the Impartial Culture and the Impartial Anonymous Culture which are two well-known assumptions often used for such a study. |
| Date: | 2018–05–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-01786590&r=cdm |
| By: | Effrosyni Diamantousi (Department of Economics, Concordia University); Eftichios Sartzetakis (Department of Economics, University of Macedonia); Stefania Strantza (Department of Economics, Concordia University) |
| Abstract: | The paper examines the stability of self-enforcing International Environmental Agreements (IEAs) among heterogeneous countries, allowing for transfers. We employ a two-stage, non-cooperative model of coalition formation. In the ?first stage each country decides whether or not to join the agreement, while in the second stage countries choose their emissions simultaneously. Coalition members agree also to share the gains from cooperation in the fi?rst stage. We use quadratic benefi?t and environmental damage functions and assume two types of countries differing in their sensitivity to the global pollutant. In examining the impact of transfers on the coalition size, we apply the notion of Potential Internal Stability (PIS). Results show that transfers can increase cooperation among heterogeneous countries. However, the increase in the coalition size, relative to the case without transfers, comes only from countries belonging to the type with the lower environmental damages, which are drawn into the coalition by the transfers ordered. Furthermore, the level of cooperation increases with the degree of heterogeneity. However, the reduction in aggregate emissions achieved by the enlarged coalition is very small leading to dismal improvement in welfare, which con?firms the "paradox of cooperation". |
| Keywords: | Enviromental Economics. |
| JEL: | Q5 |
| Date: | 2018–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mcd:mcddps:2018_06&r=cdm |
| By: | Mengel, Friederike (Department of Economics, University of Essex); Mohlin , Erik (Department of Economics, Lund University); Weidenholzer, Simon (Department of Economics, University of Essex) |
| Abstract: | We experimentally explore the role of collective incentives in sustaining cooperation in finitely repeated public goods games with imperfect monitoring. In our experiment players only observe noisy signals about individual contributions, while total output is perfectly observed. We consider sanctioning mechanisms that allow agents to commit to collective punishment in case total output fall short of a target. We find that cooperation is higher in the case of collective punishment compared to both the case of no punishment and the case of standard peer-to-peer punishment which conditions on the noisy signals. Further experiments indicate that both the commitment possibility and the collective nature of punishment matter for the positive effect of collective incentives on cooperation. |
| Keywords: | Public goods game; Team production; Punishment; Collective sanctions; Imperfect monitoring |
| JEL: | C72 D02 D23 D90 |
| Date: | 2018–05–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2018_011&r=cdm |
| By: | Miquel Pellicer (GIGA Institute of Middle East Studies and SALDRU, School of Economics, University of Cape Town); Eva Wegner (School of Politics & International Relations, University College Dublin); Alexander De Juan (Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies a dimension of protest largely overlooked in the literature: protest scope, that is, whether protests seek large, structural, changes for a large share of the population or focus on small-scale improvements for small groups. We argue that this protest dimension is relevant for understanding the political consequences of protests. We show empirically that protests vary substantially in scope and that scope is not collinear with other protest dimensions, such as size, motive, or tactics. We explore drivers of individual preferences for protest scope with a survey experiment in two South African townships. We find that respondents made to feel more efficacious tend to support protests of broader scope. This effect operates via a social psychology channel whereby efficacy leads people to assign blame for their problems to more systemic causes. |
| Keywords: | Protest Dimensions, Political Behaviour, Social Psychology, Survey Experiment, Efficacy, South Africa |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ldr:wpaper:223&r=cdm |
| By: | Marium Akhtar (National Defense University, Islamabad) |
| Abstract: | The role of identity and collective conscious is crucial for the understanding of social mobilization and orientation in any nation confronted with terrorism and political violence. Identity plays a crucial role in the lives of citizens may it be ethnic, cultural, religious or social aspects of a group or community as it can be an effective instrument for mass manipulation and propagation of ideology and conduct of a society. A challenged, deprived or marginalized group identity can be a precursor for politicization and violent manifestation in form of aggression and political violence by the challenged group or community. The paper intended to discuss the interplay and manifestation of identity and sense of deprivation at societal levels in modern nation states. It analyzed identity crisis as a catalyst for turning a deprived and vulnerable and insecure segment of the society, into a violent group, performing terror activities inflicted upon state as evident in case study of Kurds vs Turkish state in the contemporary scenario. |
| Keywords: | Turkey, Kurds, identity, deprivation, nationalism, terrorism |
| Date: | 2018–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:fpaper:012&r=cdm |
| By: | Daniel Cardona (Universitat de les Illes Balears); Jenny De Freitas (Universitat de les Illes Balears); Antoni Rubí-Barceló (Universitat de les Illes Balears) |
| Abstract: | We analyze the selection of a policy platform by a group of heterogeneous agents to confront the status quo policy defended by another group in a subsequent contest. This policy choice results from the interaction between the inter-group effects that lead to strategic restraint and the intra-group effects due to the heterogeneity among challengers. We detail the conditions that give rise to polarization or moderation of the selected challenging policy with respect to what would be selected by this group in the absence of any struggle. |
| Keywords: | political processes; conflict; group contests; endogenous claims; intra-group heterogeneity |
| JEL: | D72 D74 C72 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ubi:deawps:87&r=cdm |
| By: | Reza Javidi Sabbaghian (Hakim Sabzevari University, Sabzevar) |
| Abstract: | Recently, inappropriate governance within the watersheds have caused to qualitative and quantitative degradation of water resources and unbalanced allocation of resources amongst the beneficiaries. Therefore, one of the most important challenges for stakeholders is the selection of final sustainable development criteria, which affects the planning and management for water supply scenarios and leads to effective watershed governance. Selection of final criteria depends on the stakeholders’ preferences and the decision-making risk attitudes. The risk attitudes related to the importance of viewpoints associated with stakeholders’ number within the watershed. This paper has developed a comprehensive approach based on the risk analysis to calculate the group weights and the group consensus measurements of criteria, which leads to selecting final decision-making criteria. Accordingly, in the first step, the initial criteria are determined by the group of DMs. In the second step, the group criteria weights have been calculated and in the third step, the group consensus measurements of criteria have been measured in several risk attitudes using the Hybrid Weighted Averaging (HWA) operator and the distance-based group consensus method. Finally, the most important criteria have been selected from the initial criteria based on the group consensus measurements, compared with an acceptable threshold level. This approach has been developed for the Kashafrud watershed, to select the final sustainable criteria in 2040. The results showed that the number of the final criteria depends on the risk attitudes of decision-making. Development of this method is recommended for watershed governance in the world. |
| Keywords: | Sustainable Development Criteria, Effective Watershed Governance, Group Consensus, Risk Analysis, Hybrid Weighted Averaging Operator |
| Date: | 2018–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:fpaper:003&r=cdm |
| By: | Norris, Pippa (Harvard University); Gromping, Max (University of Sydney) |
| Abstract: | National elections for the legislature and/or the executive are held in almost all countries around the globe. This development has the potential to strengthen democracy. Yet, numerous contests suffer from electoral malpractice, whether from unfair laws, gerrymandered boundaries, restrictions on the free press, maladministration, election-related violence, ballot box fraud, or the abuse of money in politics. How widespread are these problems? For updated evidence, this report draws upon the fifth release of the Perceptions of Electoral Integrity dataset (PEI 5.0), in May 2017. This dataset compares the views of 2,709 experts who have evaluated electoral integrity in 158 countries holding 241 national elections from 1 July 2012 to 31 December 2016. Part II of the report summarizes the latest results by global region and highlights selected cases to go beyond the numbers, contrasting positive and negative practices. We focus on several elections held in 2015 and 2016--including the UK and Iceland in Western Europe, the United States in the Americas, Australia and the Philippines in Asia Pacific, Russia and Lithuania in Central and Eastern Europe, Iran and Syria in the MENA region, and The Gambia and Gabon in Sub-Saharan Africa. Part III examines two major challenges--electoral corruption and coercion. The EIP project has developed new measures to monitor the extent of these problems--where they occur and what conditions these malpractices commonly undermine electoral integrity. Are these techniques of carrots and sticks deployed separately--or are they combined? More systematic evidence about these problems can provide insights about how best to target reforms and what policies have proved most effective. Part IV focuses on populist threats to electoral integrity. We first compare several recent European elections to see whether contemporary support for populist parties is rising or stalled, including in the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany. We then identify three mechanisms whereby populism threatens free and fair contests including through damaging public confidence in elections, actively undermining international standards of electoral integrity and violating electoral laws, and colluding from Russian attempts to interfere with democracy abroad. Parts V and VI provide additional reference and technical information. With this update, PEI 5.0 covers 91% of all independent nation states holding national parliamentary and presidential elections around the world, excluding micro-states (with a population below 100,000). The study provides independent assessments utilizing a rolling survey where experts assess the quality of national elections one month after the close of the polls. Based on the views of 2,709 experts, the average response rate for PEI 5.0 is 28%. The technical appendix provides full details about the reliability and validity of the dataset. |
| Date: | 2017–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp17-018&r=cdm |
| By: | Fehr, Ernst (University of Zurich); Williams, Tony (University of Zurich) |
| Abstract: | Throughout human history, informal sanctions played a key role in the enforcement of social norms and the provision of public goods. However, a considerable body of evidence suggests that informal peer sanctions often cause large efficiency costs. This raises the question whether alternative (peer) sanctioning systems exist that avoid these costs and will be preferred by the people. Here, we show that welfare-enhancing peer sanctioning without much need for costly punishment emerges quickly if we introduce two relevant features of social life into the experiment: (i) subjects can migrate across groups with different sanctioning institutions and (ii) they have the chance to achieve consensus about normatively appropriate behavior. The exogenous removal of the norm consensus opportunity reduces the efficiency of peer punishment and renders centralized sanctioning by an elected judge the dominant institution. However, if given the choice, subjects universally reject peer sanctioning without a norm consensus opportunity – an institution that has hitherto dominated research in this field – in favor of peer sanctioning with a norm consensus opportunity or an equally efficient institution with centralized punishment by an elected judge. Migration opportunities and normative consensus building are key to the quick emergence of an efficient culture of universal cooperation because the more prosocial subjects populate the two efficient institutions first, elect prosocial judges (if institutionally possible), and immediately establish a social norm of high cooperation. This norm appears to guide subjects' cooperation and punishment choices, including the virtually complete removal of antisocial punishment when judges make the sanctioning decision. |
| Keywords: | cooperation, punishment, endogenous institutions, public goods |
| JEL: | D02 D03 D72 H41 |
| Date: | 2018–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11457&r=cdm |
| By: | Aneesh Joseph (University of Southampton, UK) |
| Abstract: | In postcolonial Kerala (India), Adivasis (the indigenous communities) have been entrenched in a legal discourse on the restoration of their alienated land, which they had lost to the migrant settlers (non-Adivasis migrated from other parts of Kerala to Aidvasi settlements, encroaching their land). In the neoliberal period (after 1991), marking a historic shift, the Adivasis initiated an unprecedented socio-political mobilization for land, premised on their indigenous identity. These protracted land struggles have enabled the Adivasis to reconstitute their political subjectivity reflexively and emerge as a socio-political formation. Performing Adivasiness have been central to the way the movement has been seeking to embed the indigenous identity and construct a politics of belonging. My research interrogates the dynamics and processes that are constitutive of Adivasi subjectivity and how their land struggles are reworking the democratic fabric of Kerala. In this presentation I would like to draw on my empirical data to argue how Adivasis have inadvertently used the depriving elements of their marginality as resources for their relentless struggle for land and in turn have reconstituted their political subjectivity. |
| Keywords: | Subjectivity, belonging, Land struggles, Indigeneous politics, Reflexivity |
| Date: | 2018–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:fpaper:021&r=cdm |
| By: | Lyasko, Alexander (Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA)) |
| Abstract: | In interfirm strategic alliances that pursue their objectives in complex technological environment, the discrepancy in partners’ absorptive capacity (that is, their ability to discern, digest, recombine and practically apply novel knowledge, ideas and know-how coming from external sources) can seriously hamper the processes of mutual learning and collective knowledge creation. Therefore, partners should learn how to bridge these differences, simultaneously protecting intellectual property rights and valuable knowledge belonging to each participant in strategic collaborative projects. |
| Date: | 2018–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rnp:wpaper:041829&r=cdm |
| By: | Mery Patricia Tamayo; Estefanía Gómez; Elena Huergo |
| Abstract: | The goal of this research is to empirically study the relationship between obstacles perceived by companies to carrying out their innovation activities and their decisions about external sourcing of knowledge through the outsourcing of R&D or technological cooperation. Using information on German and Spanish companies from the year 2010, we obtain that in both countries this association is positive, and that companies that assign greater importance to factors that impede their innovation activities are also more likely to engage in external sourcing of knowledge. This relationship seems to be especially strong in companies that do not engage in internal R&D activities or do so sporadically, while it is much weaker in companies that perform internal R&D continuously. Nonetheless, the importance that companies assign to the market power of established companies as a barrier to innovation is positively associated with technological cooperation especially in continuous R&D performers. |
| Keywords: | Obstacles to innovation, outsourcing, technological cooperation |
| JEL: | L2 O3 O57 |
| Date: | 2018–05–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000122:016257&r=cdm |
| By: | Agarwal, Sumit (Georgetown University); Amromin, Gene (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago); Ben-David, Itzhak (Ohio State University); Dinc, Serdar (Rutgers University) |
| Abstract: | U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee considered many important banking reforms in 2009-2010 including the Dodd-Frank Act. We show that during this period, the foreclosure starts on delinquent mortgages were delayed in the districts of committee members even though there was no difference in delinquency rates between committee and non-committee districts. In these areas, banks delayed the start of the foreclosure process by 0.5 months (relative to the 12-month average). The total estimated cost of delay to lenders is an order of magnitude greater than the campaign contributions by the Political Action Committees of the largest mortgage servicing banks to the committee members in that period and is comparable to these banks’ lobbying expenditures. |
| JEL: | D72 G01 G21 |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:ohidic:2017-21&r=cdm |
| By: | Chiara Donnini (Università di Napoli Parthenope); Maria Laura Pesce (Università di Napoli Federico II) |
| Abstract: | We investigate the fairness property of equal-division competitive market equilibria (CME) in asymmetric information economies with a space of agents that may contain non-negligible (large) traders. We first propose an extension to our framework of the notion of strict fairness due to Zhou (1992). We prove that once agents are asymmetrically informed, any equal-division CME allocation is strictly fair, but a strictly fair allocation might not be supported by an equilibrium price. Then, we investigate the role of large traders and we provide two sufficient conditions under which, in the case of complete information economies, a redistribution of resources is strictly fair if and only if it results from a competitive mechanism. |
| Keywords: | Asymmetric information, mixed markets, strict fairness, competitive equilibrium. |
| JEL: | D43 D60 D82 |
| Date: | 2018–05–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sef:csefwp:498&r=cdm |