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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Sandra Rozo; Juan F. Vargas |
| Abstract: | Several studies have documented negative political attitudes toward immigration among local voters. By examining how episodes of crisis-driven internal and international migration affect electoral as well as socioeconomic outcomes across municipalities in Colombia, we explore whether these attitudes are explained by self-interest or sociotropic motives. Self-interested voters care primarily about the impact of migration inflows on their personal socioeconomic well-being. Sociotropic voters, in contrast, view migrants as a threat to local cultural or social norms and display in-group bias. We take advantage of the fact that both internal migrants (displaced by the armed conflict in Colombia) and international migrants (driven by economic and political downturns in neighboring Venezuela) disproportionately locate in municipalities with early settlements of individuals from their place of origin and find that, while internal migration inflows do not lead to negative electoral results for the incumbent party, international migration reduces support for incumbents and increases support for right-wing candidates. Further, we find that once we control for migration-affected proxies for individual welfare, the electoral effects of international migration are largely unchanged, but those of the internal displacement shock disappear. Taken together, these findings are consistent with a scenario in which political attitudes are driven by sociotropic motives when reacting to international migration and by self-interest when reacting to internal forced migration. This asymmetry has the potential to inform policy responses aimed at maximizing the net benefits of migration. |
| Keywords: | Migration, Electoral Outcomes, Political Economy, Colombia |
| JEL: | D72 F2 O15 R23 |
| Date: | 2018–10–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000518:016836&r=cdm |
| By: | Bernhardt, Dan (Department ofEconomics, University of Illinois and University of Warwick); Buisseret, Peter (Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago); Hidir, Sinem (Department of Economics, University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | We study multi-district legislative elections between two office-seeking parties when the election pits a relatively strong party against a weaker party ; when each party faces uncertainty about how voter preferences will evolve during the campaign; and, when each party cares not only about winning a majority, but also about its share of seats in the event that it holds majority or minority status. When the initial imbalance favoring one party is small, each party targets the median voter in the median district, in pursuit of a majority. When the imbalance is moderate, the advantaged party continues to hold the centre-ground, but the disadvantaged party retreats to target its core supporters; it does so to fortify its minority share of seats in the likely event that it fails to secure a majority. Finally, when the imbalance is large, the advantaged party advances toward its opponent, raiding its moderate supporters in pursuit of an outsized majority. |
| JEL: | D72 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:1180&r=cdm |
| By: | Carlos Alós-Ferrer; Johannes Buckenmaier |
| Abstract: | Approval voting allows voters to support as many candidates as they wish. One advantage of the method is that voters have weak or no incentives to vote insincerely. However, the exact meaning of this statement depends on how the voters' preferences over candidates are extended to sets. We show that, under a combination of standard, well-established assumptions on the extended preferences, voters will always have a strictly sincere best response (that is, a best response ballot such that every approved candidate is strictly preferred to every disapproved one) given the ballots of other voters. The result holds for arbitrary preferences over candidates, allowing for indifferences but covering the extreme cases of dichotomous or strict preferences. As a corollary, we show that the classical strategy-proofness result for the case of dichotomous preferences on alternatives (Brams and Fishburn, 1978) holds for a larger class of preferences on sets than originally assumed. |
| Keywords: | Approval voting, manipulation, preferences among sets, strict sincerity |
| JEL: | C72 D71 D72 |
| Date: | 2018–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:econwp:302&r=cdm |
| By: | Marco Alberto De Benedetto (Birkbeck, University of London) |
| Abstract: | We study the effect of the electoral system on the quality of politicians, measured by the average educational attainment, at the local level in Italy over the period 1994-2017. Since 1993, municipalities below 15,000 inhabitants vote with a single-ballot system, whereas cities above 15,000 inhabitants threshold are subject to a double ballot.Exploiting the discontinuous policy change nearby the population cut-off we have implemented a RDD and found that runoff elections lead to a decrease in the educational attainment of local politicians by about 2% compared to years of schooling of politicians in municipalities voting with a single-ballot scheme.We speculate that the negative effect is driven by the different selection process of candidates adopted by political parties between runoff and single-ballot system. Findings are similar when we use alternative measures of quality of politicians related both to the previous occupation and to previous political experience, and when we control for different measures of political closeness. |
| JEL: | C31 D72 I20 J42 |
| Date: | 2018–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bbk:bbkcam:1802&r=cdm |
| By: | Stensholt, Eivind (Dept. of Business and Management Science, Norwegian School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Struggles over the single-seat preferential election method IRV, Instant Runoff Voting, (a.k.a. AV, Alternative Vote or RCV, Ranked-Choice Voting) go on in many arenas: legislatures, courts, websites, and scholarly journals. Monotonicity failures, i.e. elections (preference distributions) that may allow the startling tactical voting of Pushover or its reverse, has come to the forefront. An analysis of 3-candidate elections concludes that monotonicity failures, while not rare, are hard to predict and risky to exploit; it also explains the scarcity of evidence for effects on election results. A more unfortunate possibility is the No-Show accident; the number of ballots with preference order XYZ grows beyond a critical size and cause Z to win instead of Y. An analysis concludes that this must happen often enough to justify a modification of the rules. Pictograms and constellation diagrams are visualization tools that organize the set of possible elections efficiently for the analysis, which obtains explicit classification of elections where Pushover or a No-Show accident may occur or may already have occurred, and of bounds for the number of voters that must be involved. The analysis takes place in close contact with two frameworks for preferential election methods, one mathematical and one legal/political; these frameworks are themes for two survey sections. |
| Keywords: | Instant Runoff Voting; Monotonicity failures; No-Show accident; Pictograms; Constellation Diagrams |
| JEL: | C00 D72 |
| Date: | 2018–10–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhhfms:2018_013&r=cdm |
| By: | Edo, Anthony; Giesing, Yvonne; Öztunc, Jonathan; Poutvaara, Panu |
| Abstract: | Immigration has become one of the most divisive political issues in the United States, the United Kingdom, France and several other Western countries. We estimate the impact of immigration on voting for far-left and far-right candidates in France, using panel data on presidential elections from 1988 to 2017. To derive causal estimates, we instrument more recent immigration flows by past settlement patterns in 1968. We find that immigration increases support for far-right candidates and has no robust effect on far-left voting. The increased support for far-right candidates is driven by low educated immigrants from non-Western countries. |
| Keywords: | Voting,Immigration,Political economy |
| JEL: | D72 F22 J15 P16 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc18:181564&r=cdm |
| By: | Laurent Bouton (Department of Economics, Georgetown University); Paola Conconi; Francisco Pino; Maurizio Zanardi |
| Abstract: | We study how electoral incentives affect policy choices on secondary issues, which only minorities of voters care intensely about. We develop a model in which office and policy motivated politicians choose to support or oppose regulations on these issues. We derive conditions under which politicians flip-flop, voting according to their policy preferences at the beginning of their terms, but in line with the preferences of single-issue minorities as they approach re-election. To assess the evidence, we study U.S. senators’ votes on gun control, environment, and reproductive rights. In line with our model’s predictions, election proximity has a pro-gun effect on Democratic senators and a pro-environment effect on Republican senators. These effects only arise for non-retiring senators, who represent states where the single-issue minority is of intermediate size. Also in line with our theory, election proximity has no impact on senators’ decisions on reproductive rights, because of the presence of single-issue minorities on both sides. |
| Keywords: | Electoral incentives, Environment, Gun control, Reproductive Rights. |
| JEL: | D72 I18 Q00 |
| Date: | 2018–10–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:geo:guwopa:gueconwpa~18-18-15&r=cdm |
| By: | Hopp, Daniel; Becker, Johannes; Kriebel, Michael |
| Abstract: | We report evidence from a series of laboratory experiments that focus on mental accounting of 'public funds'. Groups of three players decide upon how much to redistribute within the group. We measure the preference to redistribute when transfers are made either out of individual accounts (the players' own money) or out of a common account (the group's money). Since the common account is dissolved after each round and paid out to individuals, its size should not affect the decision to redistribute. The experiment is designed to rule out an anchoring effect. We find that the (relative) size of the common account significantly affects redistribution behavior. Specifically, the transfer increases in the relative size of the common account – but only when the transfer is paid out of the common account (and not out of the individual account). We interpret these findings as evidence for a flypaper effect due to mental accounting and discuss implications for tax policy and government spending. |
| Keywords: | mental accounting,flypaper effect,lab experiments |
| JEL: | C92 D72 H31 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc18:181629&r=cdm |
| By: | Bothello , Joel (ESSEC Business School); Mehrpouya, Afshin (HEC Paris - Accounting and Management Control Department) |
| Abstract: | Recent contributions in the domains of governance and regulation elucidate the importance of rule-intermediation (RI), the role that organizations adopt to bridge actors playing regulatory or “rule-making” (RM) roles, and those adopting target or “rule-taking” (RT) roles. Intermediation not only enables diffusion and translation of regulatory norms, but also allows for the representation of different actors in policy-making arenas. While prior studies have explored the roles that such RIs adopt to facilitate their intermediation functions, we have yet to consider how field-level structuring processes influence (and are influenced by) the various and changing roles adopted by RIs. In this study, we focus on the mutually constitutive relations between field-level change processes and the evolving roles of RIs by studying the rise of ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives/Local Governments for Sustainability), an RI serving as a bridge for sustainable urban development policies between the United Nations and urban authorities. Using ICLEI as an illustrate case, we theorize four different processes of regulatory field consolidation and fragmentation including: problematization, role specialization, marketization and orchestrated decentralization. We discuss their implications for the RI roles in the field and further theorize the changing dynamics of trickle-up intermediation processes as an RI gains power and influence. |
| Keywords: | governance; intermediation; rule‐intermediary; sustainable development |
| JEL: | G34 |
| Date: | 2018–07–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ebg:heccah:1304&r=cdm |
| By: | Laurent Bouton (Department of Economics, Georgetown University); Alessandro Lizzeri; Nicola Persico |
| Abstract: | We present a political-economic model of total government obligations-debt and entitlements. In our model, both are tools by which temporarily powerful groups extract resources from groups that will be powerful: debt transfers resources across periods; entitlements directly target the future allocation of resources. We prove four results. First, debt and entitlements are strategic substitutes: constraining one increases the other. Second, it is sometimes beneficial to relax a constraint on debt, and always to limit but not eliminate entitlements. Third, debt and entitlements respond in opposite ways to political instability. Finally, polarization can cause joint growth of debt and entitlements. |
| Keywords: | Government debt, entitlement programs, fiscal rules, political economy |
| JEL: | D72 E62 H60 |
| Date: | 2018–10–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:geo:guwopa:gueconwpa~18-18-16&r=cdm |
| By: | Eichenseer, Michael; Moser, Johannes |
| Abstract: | We examine how leadership affects a dynamic public goods game. Using a setting where cooperation gains can be reinvested, our findings suggest that leadership has a positive impact on final wealth. Somewhat surprisingly, leadership also has a positive impact on reducing inequality within groups as measured by the Gini index. Based on a sequential prisoner's dilemma, we elicit types for conditional cooperation. Our results indicate that groups work best when led by cooperatively inclined individuals. Furthermore, early contributions by the leader are crucial and yield a high return. |
| Keywords: | Leadership,Public Goods Game,Conditional Cooperation,Inequality,Growth,Lab Experiment |
| JEL: | C72 C92 H41 D63 C72 C92 H41 D63 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc18:181599&r=cdm |