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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Carolina Arteaga; Victoria Barone |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates the effects of the opioid epidemic on political outcomes by leveraging rich geographic variation in exposure to the crisis. We study its effect on the Republican vote share in House and presidential elections from 1982 to 2020. Our results suggest that greater exposure to the opioid epidemic continuously increased the Republican vote share, starting in the early 2000s. This higher vote share translated into additional seats won by Republicans in the House from 2014 until 2020, as well as House members holding more conservative views. These effects are explained by voters changing their views rather than compositional changes. |
| Keywords: | Opioids, Mortality, Voting, Polarization |
| JEL: | D72 I12 I18 J13 |
| Date: | 2023–12–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tor:tecipa:tecipa-765&r=cdm |
| By: | Vincent Anesi (DEM, Université du Luxembourg); Peter Buisseret (Department of Government, Harvard University, USA) |
| Abstract: | We develop a dynamic model in which a group collectively bargains with an external party. At each date the group makes an offer to the external party (the ‘agent’) in exchange for a concession. Group members hold heterogeneous preferences over agreements and are uncertain about the agent’s resolve. We show that all group members favor more aggressive proposals than they would if they were negotiating alone. By eliciting more information about the agent’s resolve, these offers reduce the group members’ uncertainty about the agent’s preferences and therefore reduce the group’s internal conflicts over its negotiating strategy. To mitigate the consequent risk that negotiations fail, decisive group members successively give up their influence over proposals: starting from any initially democratic decision process, the group eventually consolidates its entire negotiation authority into the hands of a single member |
| Keywords: | Adverse selection, collective choice, political economy, dictatorship, bargaining. |
| JEL: | D02 D71 D78 D82 L22 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:luc:wpaper:23-12&r=cdm |
| By: | Yves Breitmoser; Justin Valasek; Justin Mattias Valasek |
| Abstract: | We report on the results of an experiment designed to disentangle behavioral biases in information aggregation of committees. Subjects get private signals about the state of world, send binary messages, and finally vote under either majority or unanimity rules. Committee decisions are significantly more efficient than predicted by Bayesian equilibrium even with lying aversion. Messages are truthful, subjects correctly anticipate the truthfulness (contradicting limited depth of reasoning), but strikingly overestimate their pivotality when voting (contradicting plain lying aversion). That is, committees are efficient because members message truthfully and vote non-strategically. We show that all facets of behavior are predicted by overreaction, subjects overshooting in Bayesian updating, which implies that subjects exaggerate the importance of truthful messages and sincere voting. A simple one-parameteric generalization of quantal response equilibrium capturing overreaction covers 87 percent of observed noise. |
| Keywords: | committees, incomplete information, cheap talk, information aggregation, laboratory experiment, Bayesian updating, lying aversion, limited depth of reasoning |
| JEL: | D71 D72 C90 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10800&r=cdm |
| By: | Valeria Burdea (LMU Munich); Jonathan Woon (University of Pittsburgh) |
| Abstract: | We conduct an experiment in which groups are tasked with evaluating the truth of a set of politically relevant facts and statements, and we investigate whether communication improves information aggregation and the accuracy of group decisions. Our findings suggest that the effect of communication depends on the underlying accuracy of individual judgments. Communication improves accuracy when individuals tend to be incorrect, but diminishes it when individuals are likely to be correct ex ante. We also find that when groups vote independently without communicating, subjects update their beliefs in a manner consistent with interpreting others' votes as mildly informative signals, but not when they communicate beforehand. The chat analysis suggests that group members use communication to present their knowledge of related facts and to engage in interactive reasoning. Moreover, the volume of both types of communication increases with item difficulty. |
| Keywords: | collective decisions; voting; communication; |
| JEL: | D70 D72 D83 |
| Date: | 2023–11–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:443&r=cdm |
| By: | Doron Y. Levit; Nadya Malenko; Ernst G. Maug |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a unified theory of blockholder governance and the voting premium, in a setting without takeovers and controlling shareholders. A voting premium emerges when a minority blockholder tries to influence the composition of the shareholder base by accumulating votes and buying shares from dissenting shareholders. Empirical measures of the voting premium do not reflect the value of voting rights or voting power. A negative voting premium results from free-riding by dispersed shareholders on the blockholder’s trades. Conflicts between dispersed shareholders and the blockholder endogenously increase the liquidity of voting shares, but do not necessarily increase the voting premium. |
| JEL: | D72 D74 G34 |
| Date: | 2023–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31892&r=cdm |
| By: | Can Celebi (University of Mannheim); Stefan Pencyznski (School of Economics and Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science, University of East Anglia) |
| Abstract: | Theoretical work by Feddersen and Pesendorfer (1998) has shown how strategic voting undermines the intuition that unanimous voting eliminates convictions of innocent defendants. We set up a level-k model of jury voting and experimentally investigate strategic thinking with an experimental design that uses intra-team communication. Looking at juries using the unanimity rule, we show that the jury performance depends on the strategic sophistication of jury members, which in turn depends on the complexity of the task at hand. |
| Keywords: | Jury voting, levels of reasoning, strategic voting |
| JEL: | D72 D83 |
| Date: | 2023–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uea:wcbess:23-01&r=cdm |
| By: | Eugenio Levi (Department of Public Economics, Masaryk University, Brno, 602 00, Czech Republic, Faculty of Economics and Management, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bozen-Bolzano, 39100, Italy); Abhijit Ramalingam (Department of Economics, Walker College of Business, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC 28608, United States) |
| Abstract: | While inequality in resource endowments has been shown to affect cooperation levels in groups, much of this evidence comes from studies of within-group inequality. In an online public goods experiment, we instead examine the effects of payoff-irrelevant inequality in resources between groups on cooperation within equal groups. When all groups are poor or rich, their contribution behaviour is very similar. Relative inequality, when poor and rich groups coexist, leads to lower contributions in rich groups. Our results suggest that this is related to a combination of within- and between-group inequality aversion and to stereotypes about the rich contributing less than the poor. |
| Keywords: | between-group, resource inequality, cooperation, public goods, online experiment, beliefs |
| JEL: | C72 C91 C92 D63 H41 |
| Date: | 2023–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mub:wpaper:2023-09&r=cdm |
| By: | Hideo Konishi (Boston College); Chen-Yu Pan (National Chengchi University, Taiwan); Dimitar Simeonov (Bahçeşehir University) |
| Abstract: | We consider a team contest in which players make efforts to compete with other teams for a prize, and players of the winning team divide the prize according to a prize-sharing rule. This prize-sharing rule matters in generating members’ efforts and attracting players from outside. Assuming that players differ in their abilities to contribute to a team and their abilities are observable, we analyze which team structure is realized by allowing players to move across teams. This inter-team mobility is achieved via head-hunting: a team leader can offer one of the positions to an outside player. We say that it is a successful head-hunting if the player is better off by taking the position, and the team’s winning probability is improved. A team structure is stable if there is no successful head-hunting opportunity. We show that if all teams employ the egalitarian sharing rule, then the complete sorting of players according to their abilities occurs, and inter-team inequality becomes the largest. In contrast, if all teams employ a substantially unequal sharing rule, there is a stable team structure with a small inter-team inequality and a large intra-team inequality. This result illustrates a trade-off between intra-team inequality and inter-team inequality in forming teams. |
| Keywords: | group contest, pairwise stable matching, assortative matching, farsightedness, largest consistent set, effectiveness function |
| JEL: | C71 C72 C78 D71 D72 D74 |
| Date: | 2023–11–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boc:bocoec:1061&r=cdm |
| By: | Karpowitz, Christopher F. (Brigham Young University); O'Connell, Stephen D. (Emory University); Preece, Jessica (Brigham Young University); Stoddard, Olga B. (Brigham Young University) |
| Abstract: | Policies that increase women's representation often intend to provide women with influence over processes and decisions of the organization in which they are implemented. This paper studies the effect of gender composition and leadership on women's influence in two field experiments. Our first study finds that male-majority teams accord disproportionately less influence to women and are less likely to choose women to represent the team externally. We then replicate this finding in a new context and with a larger sample. To investigate the relationship between formal leadership and women's influence and authority, the second study also varied the gender of an assigned team leader. We find that a female leader substantially increases women's influence, even in male-majority teams. With a model of discriminatory voting, we show that either increasing the share of women or assigning a female leader reduces the rate at which individual teammates discriminate against women by more than 50%. These conditions both increase the influence of women and improve women's experience in work teams by creating an institutional environment that reduces the expression of discriminatory behavior at the individual level. |
| Keywords: | gender, field experiment |
| JEL: | J16 |
| Date: | 2023–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16625&r=cdm |
| By: | Ximeng Fang (Saïd Business School, University of Oxford); Sven Heuser (FraunhoferInstitute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS); Lasse S. Stötzer (Institute on Behavior and Inequality (briq)) |
| Abstract: | Growing political polarization is often attributed to “echo chambers” among likeminded individuals and a lack of social interactions among contrary-minded individuals. We provide quasi-experimental evidence on the effects of in-person conversations on individual-level polarization outcomes, studying a large-scale intervention in Germany that matched pairs of strangers for private face-to-face meetings to discuss divisive political issues. We find asymmetric effects: conversations with like-minded individuals caused political views to become more extreme (ideological polarization); by contrast, conversations with contrary-minded individuals did not lead to a convergence of political views, but significantly reduced negative beliefs and attitudes toward ideological out-group members (affective polarization), while also improving perceived social cohesion more generally. These effects of contrary-minded conversations seem to be driven mostly by positive experiences of interpersonal contact. |
| Keywords: | polarization, intergroup contact, behavioral political economy |
| JEL: | D90 Z13 C99 J15 |
| Date: | 2023–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:270&r=cdm |
| By: | Abigail Barr (University of Nottingham); Anna Hochleitner (NHH Bergen); Silvia Sonderegger (University of Nottingham) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we study the relationship between inequality and social instability. While the argument that inequality can be damaging for the cohesion of a society is old, the empirical evidence is mixed. We use a novel approach to isolate the causal relationship running from inequality to instability. Specifically, we conduct a laboratory experiment. In the experiment, two groups are interacting with each other repeatedly and have an incentive to cooperate even though cooperation comes at the cost of inter-group inequality. In the second half of the experiment, we vary the extent of the inequality implied by cooperation. Our results show that increasing such inequality has a destabilising effect; the disadvantaged group attacks the status quo. We show that this behaviour is consistent with a simple theoretical framework incorporating disadvantageous inequality aversion and myopic best response. Moreover, we find that a worsening of the absolute situation of the disadvantaged group or a sudden rather than gradual increase in inequality exacerbates the destabilising effect of inequality. Finally, we show that history matters, with people responding differently to the same level of inequality now depending on their past experiences. |
| Keywords: | Collective decision making; Conflict and Revolutions;Inequality |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notcdx:2023-13&r=cdm |
| By: | Massimo Pulejo |
| Abstract: | Research has argued that the success of radical parties influences citizens’ attitudes, inducing legitimization among supporters while triggering backlash among opponents. Yet, especially for far-right parties, empirical tests of the backlash hypothesis are scant, and limited to shifts in opinions gauged through surveys. Using novel data on volunteering associations, this paper estimates citizens’ behavioral reactions to far-right victories in Italian municipal elections. Over a mayoral term, the narrow victory of a far-right coalition is followed by an 11.4% growth in the per-capita number of local NGOs. The effect is driven by social welfare associations, which provide poverty relief and assistance to both natives and immigrants. Individual-level survey data document how the growth in volunteering is driven by left-leaning individuals with positive attitudes towards immigrants. These findings complement our understanding of the consequences of far-right success, showing that - besides shifting attitudes - it may foster behavioral reactions with tangible socioeconomic consequences. |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:baf:cbafwp:cbafwp23214&r=cdm |
| By: | Hönow, Nils Christian; Pourviseh, Adrian |
| Abstract: | Communication is well known to increase cooperation rates in social dilemma situations, but the exact mechanisms behind this have been questioned and discussed. This study examines the impact of communication on public good provisioning in an artefactual field experiment conducted with 216 villagers from small, rural communities in northern Namibia. In line with previous experimental findings, we observe a strong increase in cooperation when face-to-face communication is allowed before decision making. We additionally introduce a condition in which participants cannot discuss the dilemma but talk to their group members about an unrelated topic prior to learning about the public good game. It turns out that this condition already leads to higher cooperation rates, albeit not as high as in the condition in which discussions about the social dilemma are possible. The setting in small communities also allows investigating the effect of pre-existing social relationships between group members and their interaction with communication. We find that both types of communication are primarily effective among socially more distant group members, which suggests that communication and social ties work as substitutes in increasing cooperation. Further analyses rule out better comprehension of the game and increased mutual expectations of one's group members' contributions as drivers for the communication effect. Finally, we discuss the role of personal and injunctive norms to keep commitments made during discussions. |
| Abstract: | Es ist bekannt, dass direkte, persönliche Kommunikation zwischen involvierten Personen die Kooperationsbereitschaft in sozialen Dilemmata merklich erhöht, jedoch sind die genauen Mechanismen dahinter noch nicht vollständig geklärt. Diese Studie untersucht die Auswirkungen von Kommunikation auf die Bereitstellung öffentlicher Güter ('Public Good Game') in einem Feldexperiment, das mit 216 Dorfbewohnerinnen und Dorfbewohnern aus kleinen, ländlichen Gemeinschaften im Norden Namibias durchgeführt wurde. In Übereinstimmung mit bestehenden Erkenntnissen beobachten wir einen starken Anstieg der Kooperation, wenn Gruppenmitglieder vor ihrer Entscheidung miteinander reden können. Darüber hinaus testen wir eine Bedingung, in der die Teilnehmenden nicht über das Dilemma reden können, sondern mit ihren Gruppenmitgliedern über ein anderes Thema ohne Bezug zum Public Good Game sprechen, bevor sie das Spiel kennenlernen. Es zeigt sich, dass diese Bedingung bereits zu mehr Kooperation führt, wenn auch nicht so stark wie in der Bedingung, in der Diskussionen über das soziale Dilemma möglich sind. Der Studienkontext in kleinen Gemeinschaften erlaubt es auch, die Auswirkungen bereits bestehender sozialer Beziehungen zwischen den Gruppenmitgliedern und deren Interaktion mit Kommunikation zu untersuchen. Wir stellen fest, dass beide Arten der Kommunikation vor allem bei sich weniger nahestehenden Gruppenmitgliedern wirksam sind, was darauf hindeutet, dass Kommunikation und soziale Bindungen als Substitute für die Steigerung von Kooperation wirken. Weitere Analysen schließen ein besseres Verständnis des Spiels und erhöhte gegenseitige Erwartungen an die Beiträge der Gruppenmitglieder als Erklärungen für den Effekt von Kommunikation aus. Schließlich erörtern wir die Rolle persönlicher und injunktiver Normen zur Einhaltung getroffener Absprachen. |
| Keywords: | Communication, cooperation, field experiment, public good, social ties |
| JEL: | C71 C93 D8 D9 H41 Q5 Z1 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rwirep:280402&r=cdm |