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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Antoinette Baujard (UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2, GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UJM - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne - EM - EMLyon Business School - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Roberto Brunetti (LEMMA - Laboratoire d'économie mathématique et de microéconomie appliquée - Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas); Isabelle Lebon (UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université, CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UR - Université de Rennes - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Simone Marsilio (Leibniz Universität Hannover = Leibniz University Hannover) |
| Abstract: | If individuals are to be empowered in their selection or use of a voting rule, it is necessary that they understand it. This paper analyzes people's understanding of two voting rules: evaluative voting and majority judgment. We first distinguish three components of understanding in this context: how to fill in the ballot; how votes are aggregated; and how to vote strategically. To measure each component, we draw on results from a lab experiment on incentivized voting where participants are exogenously assigned single-peaked preferences and answer comprehension questions on the rules employed. We find that most participants understand how to fill in the ballot with both voting rules. However, participants' understanding of vote aggregation under majority judgment is lower and, crucially, more heterogeneous. While some participants correctly understand its aggregation property, a sizable group fails to grasp it. We also observe no difference in voting behavior between evaluative voting and majority judgment: the data confirm the theoretical prediction that under evaluative voting there will be a high incidence of strategic voting through the use of extreme grades, but contradict the prediction that under majority judgment voters will vote less strategically. Finally, we find that with majority judgment, the better voters understand how votes are aggregated, the more they vote strategically, hence resulting in inequality in voter agency. |
| Keywords: | D71, D72, O35, C92, A13, Laboratory experiment, Agency, Majority judgment, Evaluative voting, Understanding, Voting rules |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05423963 |
| By: | Eldar, Michael (Nuffield College, University of Oxford); Hidir, Sinem (University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | We model the way in which political microtargeting induces voters to learn about their own preferences. This differs from past literature on political influence which focuses on bias. We find that the optimal strategy based on previously estimated parameters is to target groups of voters favoring one’s opponents. More generally, log-concave cost of voting distributions can give rise to non-convex sets being targeted : weak supporters of the politician and strong supporters of the opponent. Further, we provide a novel analysis of the effects of micro-targeting on turnout. We find a sense in which lower costs of voting encourage negative campaigning. |
| Keywords: | Microtargeting ; Negative Campaigning ; Mobilisation ; Demobilisation ; Political Economy ; Social Media ; Political Influence |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:1592 |
| By: | Lata Gangadharan (Department of Economics, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800 Australia); Jona Krutaj (Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, University of Nottingham, UK); Marie Claire Villeval (CNRS, Université Lumière Lyon 2, Université Jean-Monnet Saint-Etienne, emlyon business school, GATE, 69007 Lyon, France; IZA, Bonn, Germany) |
| Abstract: | Heterogeneous returns from contributions to a public good create a normative conflict between equality and efficiency. In a laboratory experiment, we proposed an indicative menu of contribution principles including one featuring a decentralized redistribution mechanism ensuring earnings equality in exchange for fully efficient contributions. Although a majority of individuals, when in the position of an impartial observer, considered this principle to be the most appropriate and expected others to agree, they failed to act on it. Designating a leader who endorsed this principle and made non-binding recommendations enabled a majority of groups to adopt it successfully. This resulted in full contributions and earnings equalization through redistribution from advantaged to disadvantaged members, effectively resolving the conflict. |
| Keywords: | Normative conflict, Redistribution, Efficiency, Leadership, Reciprocity, Experiment |
| JEL: | C92 D03 D64 D74 H41 D83 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gat:wpaper:2528 |
| By: | Sinanoglu, Semuhi; von Schiller, Armin |
| Abstract: | How do e-government tools that enable direct online communication with the executive affect citizens' support for autocracy? On the one hand, such centralised digital government tools may sway public opinion in favour of strongman rule at the expense of autocratic institutions; on the other hand, such participation and responsiveness may unintentionally unveil a wide range of issues in the country, undermining trust in the regime. We examine an electronic platform in Turkey, CIMER, that allows citizens to submit petitions and complaints, send messages to the president, and propose policies and programmes. We conducted a well-powered online survey experiment with a nationally representative sample (N≈4, 600) that estimates the effects of different types of regime propaganda around this e-portal on attitudinal and quasi-behavioural outcomes. The results suggest that propaganda through CIMER improves diffuse support for the regime and generates behavioural compliance, even among opposition voters. However, these positive effects accrue to regime institutions rather than to Erdoğan personally as the executive's personalistic leader. On certain dimensions, the propaganda backfires among the regime's core support groups, eroding their perceptions of Erdoğan's popularity as a leader. These results have major implications for the expected downstream effects of these types of digital tools on regime stability and legitimacy, and they add to the growing warnings about holding overly optimistic views concerning the effects of digitalisation on democracy. |
| Keywords: | authoritarian responsiveness, normative support, legitimacy, satisfaction with regime, trust, efficacy, propaganda, digitalisation, public administration |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:diedps:334475 |
| By: | Abhinav Khemka; Claudia Serra-Sala |
| Abstract: | We investigate how political corruption affects citizens' willingness to disclose tax evasion. We conducted a survey experiment with 1, 200 respondents in Bangalore, India, combining corruption vignettes and list experiments. Respondents were randomly presented with hypothetical candidates whose attributes varied along three dimensions: (a) alleged honesty versus corruption; (b) prioritization of infrastructure versus other public spending; and (c) political party affiliation. |
| Keywords: | Corruption, Tax evasion, List experiment, India, Voting behaviour |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2025-114 |
| By: | James Alm (Tulane University) |
| Abstract: | Economists have put forth many specific tax design recommendations over the years, both for piecemeal changes to the tax system and for more fundamental reforms. These recommendations have typically been timely, plausible, and even elegant, and they often have had widespread agreement among economists, even those of greatly differing political sentiments. However, many -- indeed perhaps most -- of these proposals have gone nowhere in the actual policy implementation stage. Why is this? I argue here that the main reason for this lack of impact is politics -- and a failure by economists to consider fully the central role of politics in policy making. Of course, all policy changes in democracies, including those that involve taxes, necessarily revolve around political considerations by elected politicians as policy makers. However, my argument goes beyond this obvious truism. Instead, I emphasize one specific aspect of politics: Who gains and who loses from a tax policy change? I argue that these are the types of political considerations that are decisive because it is the distributional effects of policies that determine how people vote and so that also determine how their elected representatives vote. I illustrate these points with a brief -- and a deliberately selective -- history of what I term 'clever' policy recommendations made over the years by major figures in the broad field of public economics and the narrower field of taxation, I then discuss the many possible reasons for this lack of policy impact, and I identify the factor that seems most likely to drive actual tax policy choices -- the effects of tax policies on the winners and losers of the policies, as determined by broadly defined 'distributional effects'. I finish with a discussion of the ways in which economics -- and other disciplines -- might more productively contribute to the policy discussion. Along the way, I indicate the ways in which the chapters in this volume contribute to the ongoing policy discussion. |
| Keywords: | Taxation; tax policy; tax incidence; distributional effects; voting; political economy |
| JEL: | H20 H22 H50 D30 D72 D78 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tul:wpaper:2601 |