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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Drinkwater, Stephen (University of Roehampton); Jennings, Colin (King's College London) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we examine three forms of regret in relation to the UK’s hugely significant referendum on EU membership that was held in June 2016. These are, (i) whether leave voters at the referendum subsequently regretted their choice (in the light of the result), (ii) whether non-voters regretted their decisions not to vote (remain) and (iii) whether individuals were more likely to indicate that it is everyone’s duty to vote following the referendum. We find evidence in favour of all three types of regret. In particular, leave voters and non-voters were significantly more likely to indicate that they would vote remain given their chance to do so again and there was a significant increase in the probability of an individual stating that it was everyone’s duty to vote in a general election in 2017 compared to 2015. |
| Keywords: | EU referendum, Brexit, voting, regret, non-voters |
| JEL: | D70 D72 F60 |
| Date: | 2021–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14589&r= |
| By: | Leyla D. Karakas; Nam Seok Kim; Devashish Mitra |
| Abstract: | Using six waves of the Swedish National Election Studies (SNES) survey data, we investigate the determinants of attitudes towards globalization barriers (trade and immigration) and how important these attitudes are in how people vote. In line with the existing results in the literature, we find that more educated and richer voters support freer trade and more immigration. We also find that conservative voters in Sweden are more likely to prefer freer trade but higher immigration barriers. Once various economic and demographic determinants of globalization barrier preferences along with voters’ ideologies on a liberal-conservative spectrum are controlled for in the analysis of voting behavior, trade barrier preferences lose their statistical significance while attitudes towards immigration barriers remain significant. This suggests that immigration attitudes affect voting behavior through channels involving identity-driven factors that are different from the channels through which more traditional electoral issues, such as trade barriers, work. Focusing on the anti-globalization Swedish Democrats, we confirm that voters with a greater preference for barriers to immigration were more likely to switch their votes to this party from the 2014 to the 2018 election. |
| Keywords: | globalization, trade, immigration, elections, voting, survey data, Sweden |
| JEL: | D72 F16 J61 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9236&r= |
| By: | Volckart, Oliver |
| Abstract: | Scholars agree that a core feature of the political style of the Holy Roman Empire was the focus on consensus, without which policies at the level of the Empire were impossible. The present article demonstrates that the consensus on which decisions of the imperial estates was based tended to be superficial and was often in danger of breaking down. This was because the diet’s open and sequential voting procedure allowed the bandwagon effect to distort outcomes. An analysis of the votes cast in the princes’ college of the diet of 1555 shows that low-status members of the college regularly imitated the decisions of high-status voters. Reforming the system would have required accepting that the members of the college were equals – an idea no one was prepared to countenance. Hence, superficial and transitory agreements remained a systematic feature of politics at the level of the Empire. |
| Keywords: | bandwagon effect; voting; early modern parliamentarism; Holy Roman Empire |
| JEL: | H11 N43 |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:111613&r= |
| By: | Michal Bauer; Jana Cahlíková; Julie Chytilová; Gérard Roland; Tomas Zelinsky |
| Abstract: | This paper provides experimental evidence showing that members of a majority group systematically shift punishment on innocent members of an ethnic minority. We develop a new incentivized task, the Punishing the Scapegoat Game, to measure how injustice affecting a member of one’s own group shapes punishment of an unrelated bystander (“a scapegoat”). We manipulate the ethnic identity of the scapegoats and study interactions between the majority group and the Roma minority in Slovakia. We find that when no harm is done, there is no evidence of discrimination against the ethnic minority. In contrast, when a member of one’s own group is harmed, the punishment ”passed” on innocent individuals more than doubles when they are from the minority, as compared to when they are from the dominant group. These results illuminate how individualized tensions can be transformed into a group conflict, dragging minorities into conflicts in a way that is completely unrelated to their behavior. |
| JEL: | C93 D74 D91 J15 |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29157&r= |
| By: | Laurens Cherchye; Pierre-André Chiappori; Bram De Rock; Charlotte Ringdal; Frederic Vermeulen |
| Abstract: | To understand the household decision-making process regarding food expenditures for children in poor households in Nairobi, we conduct an experiment with 424 married couples. In the experiment, the spouses (individually and jointly) allocated money between themselves and nutritious meals for one of their children. First, we find strong empirical support for individual rationality and cooperative behavior. Second, our results suggest that women do not have stronger preferences for children’s meals than men. Third, the spouses’respective bargaining positions derived from consumption patterns strongly correlate with more traditional indicators. Finally, we document significant heterogeneity both betweenindividuals and intra-household decision processes. |
| Keywords: | collective model, intra-household allocation, experiment, Kenya, children |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/330565&r= |
| By: | Stylianos Papageorgiou; Dimitrios Xefteris |
| Abstract: | Skills obtained by a national strategy, plus intrinsic skills, contribute to each household's financial literacy, which is shown to determine whether and to what extent a household invests. Ends-against-the-middle preferences arise as to the strategy's funding: Households with too low or too high total skills have a decreasing utility, as opposed to households with moderate skills. Moreover, the property of single-peaked preferences is violated. Our central result is that, despite the lack of well-behaved preferences, competing office-motivated political candidates propose the same-efficient-funding level under plausible assumptions, including that they are sufficiently differentiated about issues other than financial literacy. |
| Keywords: | financial literacy, electoral competition, ends-against-the-middle, differentiated candidates |
| JEL: | G53 D72 H52 |
| Date: | 2021–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucy:cypeua:04-2021&r= |
| By: | Hossain Ahmed Taufiq |
| Abstract: | Social accountability refers to promoting good governance by making ruling elites more responsive. In Bangladesh, where bureaucracy and legislature operate with little effective accountability or checks and balances, traditional horizontal or vertical accountability proved to be very blunt and weak. In the presence of such faulty mechanisms, ordinary citizens access to information is frequently denied, and their voices are kept mute. It impasses the formation of an enabling environment, where activists and civil society institutions representing the ordinary peoples interest are actively discouraged. They become vulnerable to retribution. Social accountability, on the other hand, provides an enabling environment for activists and civil society institutions to operate freely. Thus, leaders and administration become more accountable to people. An enabling environment means providing legal protection, enhancing the availability of information and increasing citizen voice, strengthening institutional and public service capacities and directing incentives that foster accountability. Donors allocate significant shares of resources to encouraging civil society to partner with elites rather than holding them accountable. This paper advocate for a stronger legal environment to protect critical civil society and whistle-blowers, and for independent grant-makers tasked with building strong, self-regulating social accountability institutions. Key Words: Accountability, Legal Protection, Efficiency, Civil Society, Responsiveness |
| Date: | 2021–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2107.13128&r= |
| By: | Sebastian Rausch (ZEW Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research, Mannheim, Germany, Department of Economics, Heidelberg University, Germany, Centre for Energy Policy and Economics at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA); Hidemichi Yonezawa (Division for Energy and Environmental Economics at the Research Department at Statistics Norway) |
| Abstract: | Technology policy is the most widespread form of climate policy and is often preferred over seemingly efficient carbon pricing. We propose a new explanation for this observation: gains that predominantly accrue to households with large capital assets and that influence majority decisions in favor of technology policy. We study climate policy choices in an overlapping generations model with heterogeneous energy technologies and distortionary income taxation. Compared to carbon pricing, green technology policy leads to a pronounced capital subsidy effect that benefits most of the current generations but burdens future generations. Based on majority voting which disregards future generations, green technology policies are favored over a carbon tax. Smart “polluter-pays” financing of green technology policies enables obtaining the support of current generations while realizing efficiency gains for future generations. |
| Keywords: | Climate Policy; Green Technology Policy; Carbon Pricing; Overlapping Generations; Intergenerational Distribution; Social Welfare; General Equilibrium |
| JEL: | Q54 Q48 Q58 D58 H23 |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eth:wpswif:21-362&r= |