Showing 1 - 10 of 1,022
We study the role of self-interest and social preferences in referenda. Our analysis is based on collective purchasing decisions of university students on deep-discount flat rate tickets for public transportation and culture. Individual usage data allows quantifying monetary benefits associated...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010496966
This paper reviews recent research on the aggregation of heterogeneous time preferences. Main results are illustrated in simple Ramsey models with two or three agents who differ in their discount factors. We employ an intertemporal view on these models and argue that preferences of a decision...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012546897
We propose the concept of level r consensus as a useful property of a preference profile which considerably enhances the stability of social choice. This concept involves a weakening of unanimity, the most extreme form of consensus. It is shown that if a preference profile exhibits level r...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010356368
When based on perceived rather than on objective income distributions, the Meltzer-Richards hypothesis and the POUM hypothesis work quite well empirically: there exists a positive link between perceived inequality or perceived upward mobility and the extent of redistribution in democratic...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010366191
In prosocial decisions, decision-makers are inherently uncertain about how their decisions impact others’ utility – we call this interpersonal uncertainty. We show that people’s response to interpersonal uncertainty shapes well-known patterns of prosocial behavior. First, using standard...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014576953
We reassess the well-known "narrow-but-deep" versus "broad-but-shallow" trade-off in international environmental agreements (IEAs), taking into account the principal-agent relationship induced by the hierarchical structure of international policy. To this end, we expand the modest coalition...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013326522
We examine whether and how democratic procedures can achieve socially desirable public good provision in the presence of profound uncertainty about the benefits of public goods, i.e., when citizens are able to identify the distribution of benefits only if they aggregate their private...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011444451
Traditional power indices ignore preferences and strategic interaction. Equilibrium analysis of particular non-cooperative decision procedures is unsuitable for normative analysis and assumes typically unavailable information. These points drive a lingering debate about the right approach to...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011410230
Do democratically chosen rules lead to more cooperation and, hence, higher efficiency, than imposed rules? To discuss when such a "dividend of democracy" obtains, we review experimental studies in which material incentives remain stacked against cooperation (i.e., free-riding incentives prevail)...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014334071
We provide experimental evidence on the emergence of redistributive societies. Individuals first vote on redistribution by feet and then learn their productivity and invest. We vary the individuals ́information about their productivities at the time when they choose a distribution rule and find...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010192077