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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Ross Hyman; Deb Otis; Seamus Allen; Greg Dennis |
| Abstract: | We present the concept of ordered majority rule, a property of Instant Runoff Voting, and compare it to the familiar concept of pairwise majority rule of Condorcet methods. Ordered majority rule establishes a social order among the candidates such that that relative order between any two candidates is determined by voters who do not prefer another major candidate. It ensures the election of a candidate from the majority party or coalition while preventing an antagonistic opposition party or coalition from influencing which candidate that may be. We show how IRV is the only voting method to satisfy ordered majority rule, for a self-consistently determined distinction between major and minor candidates, and that ordered majority rule is incompatible with the properties of Condorcet compliance, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and monotonicity. Finally, we present some arguments as to why ordered majority rule may be preferable to pairwise majority rule, using the 2022 Alaska special congressional election as a case study. |
| Date: | 2023–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2308.08430&r=cdm |
| By: | Iñigo Iturbe-Ormaetxe (: Departamento de Fundamentos del An·lisis EconÛmico (FAE), Universidad de Alicante.); Santiago Sanchez-Pages (King's College London.); Angel Solano-Garcia (Department of Economic Theory and Economic History, University of Granada.) |
| Abstract: | We examine the redistributive effects of extending voting rights to non-citizens. Our hypothesis is that the impact of this reform depends on the political power wielded by new voters to change the status quo. Specifically, we anticipate a greater power when elections are more contested. To investigate this hypothesis, we analyze the 1975 Swedish electoral reform, which granted voting rights to non-citizens in local elections. Our findings reveal a significant and one-time increase in local taxes right after the reform. This tax hike was more pronounced in municipalities with a higher proportion of non-citizens. This effect was concentrated in municipalities where the size of the newly enfranchised electorate was substantial enough to potentially upturn the outcome of the previous election. |
| Keywords: | : Voting, Redistribution, Electoral reform, Immigration, Local elections. |
| JEL: | D72 D74 F22 |
| Date: | 2023–09–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gra:wpaper:23/11&r=cdm |
| By: | Juan F. Vargas (Department of Economics, Universidad del Rosario); Miguel E. Purroy (Harvard Kennedy School); Felipe Coy (Princeton University); Sergio Perilla (Department of Economics, Universidad del Rosario); Mounu Prem (Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance) |
| Abstract: | Criminal groups use violence strategically to manipulate the behavior of victims and bystanders. At the same time, violence is a stimulus that causes fear, which also shapes people’s reactions. Taking advantage of the randomness in the timing of antipersonnell and mine accidents in Colombia, as well as their coordinates relative to those of voting polls, we identify the effect of violence-induced fear (independent from intentions) on electoral behavior. Fortuitous landmine explosions reduce political participation. We further disentangle whether the type of fear caused by landmine explosions responds to an information channel (whereby people learn about the risk of future victimization) or by the salience of the explosion (which causes individuals to make impulsive decisions, driven by survival considerations), and show evidence in favor of the latter. While the turnout reduction takes place across the ideological spectrum, we document that the explosions induce a shift in the political preferences of individuals who do vote. These findings point to worrisome potential consequences for the consolidation of democracies in places affected by conflict. |
| Keywords: | Conflict, fear, Landmine explosions, salience, voting |
| JEL: | D72 D74 P48 |
| Date: | 2023–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hic:wpaper:398&r=cdm |
| By: | Ginzburg, Boris (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid); Guerra, Jose Alberto (Universidad de los Andes); Lekfuangfu, Warn N. (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) |
| Abstract: | Using a laboratory experiment, we study the incentives of individuals to contribute to a public good that is provided if and only if the fraction of contributors reaches a certain threshold. We jointly vary the size of the group, the cost of contributing, the required threshold, and the framing of contributions (giving to the common pool, or not taking from the common pool). We find that a higher threshold makes individuals more likely to contribute. The effect is strong enough that in a small group, raising the required threshold increases the probability that the public good is provided. In larger groups, however, the effect disappears. At the same time, we do not find a consistent effect of framing on the probability of contributing or on the likelihood of success. |
| Keywords: | threshold public goods; critical mass; framing effect; laboratory experiment |
| JEL: | C92 D91 H41 |
| Date: | 2023–08–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:020819&r=cdm |
| By: | Van Der Straeten, Karine; Yamashita, Takuro |
| Abstract: | Voters’ voting decisions crucially depend on their information. Thus, it is an important question how much / what kind of information they should know, as a normative guidance of the optimal extent of transparency. We consider a simple two-alternative majority voting environment, and study the optimal information disclosure policy by a utilitarian social planner. Although full transparency is sometimes (informally) argued as ideal, we show that full transparency is often strictly suboptimal. This is related to the well-known potential mis-match between what a majority wants and what is socially optimal. Under certain conditions, in order to alleviate this mismatch, the op-timal policy discloses just the “anonymized” information about the value of the alternatives to the voters, placing them effectively behind a partial “veil of ignorance”. |
| Date: | 2023–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:128424&r=cdm |
| By: | Kenju Kamei (Faculty of Economics, Keio University); Smriti Sharma (Business School, Newcastle University); Matthew J. Walker (Business School, Newcastle University) |
| Abstract: | Sanction enforcement offers the potential to mitigate free riding on punishment among multiple third parties. Cross-societal differences in the effectiveness of sanction enforcement may be explained by factors rooted in cultural evolution. This paper provides the first experiment to study third-party enforcement of punishment norms with and without opportunities for higher-order punishment by selecting two different societies in terms of the degree of ancestral kinship ties: India and the United Kingdom. In both societies, third parties strongly inflict punishment when they encounter a norm violation, and a third party's failure to punish the norm violator invites higher-order punishment from their fellow third parties. These behavioral patterns are consistent with a model of social preferences and literature from anthropology and theoretical biology. On the other hand, two clear cross-societal variation emerges. First, third-party enforcement is stronger in the UK than in India. Parallel to this behavioral pattern, a supplementary survey also validates the conjecture that people in a society with looser ancestral kinship ties (the UK) are relatively more willing to engage in pro-social punishment. Second, intriguingly, the group size effect varies across the two societies: whereas third parties free ride on others' punitive acts in the UK, they punish more when in the presence of other third parties in India. |
| Keywords: | Experiment, Cross-societal variation, Public Goods, Third-party punishment, Higher-order |
| JEL: | C92 H41 D01 D91 |
| Date: | 2023–08–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:keo:dpaper:2023-014&r=cdm |
| By: | Marina Chugunova (MPI-IC); Klaus Keller (MPI-IC); Sampsa Samila (IESE Business School) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impact of the large structural shocks -- automation and import competition -- on voter turnout during US federal elections from 2000 to 2016. Although the negative income effect of both shocks is comparable, we find that political participation decreases significantly in counties more exposed to industrial robots. In contrast, the exposure to rising import competition does not reduce voter turnout. A survey experiment reveals that divergent beliefs about the effectiveness of government intervention drive this contrast. Our study highlights the role of beliefs in the political economy of technological change. |
| Keywords: | automation; trade; labor demand; voter turnout; |
| JEL: | D72 J23 F16 |
| Date: | 2023–08–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:418&r=cdm |