Ever since Sen crystallized the logical conflict between the welfaristic value of the Pareto principle and the nonwelfaristic value of individual libertarian rights into what he christened the impossibility of a Paretian liberal , there have been many attempts in social choice theory to...

We report on an experiment that tests for the effects of democratic versus hierarchical rules for joint decision making in organizations, like companies, which operate in a competitive environment. While discussion improves outcomes via an effect on public goods contributions, we find that there...

This paper reports results from a laboratory experiment studying the role of asymmetries, both in payoffs and recognition probabilities, in a model of strategic bargaining with Condorcet cycles. Overall, we find only limited support for the equilibrium predictions. The main deviations from...

Promises are prevalent in many economic environments. They offer the opportunity to honor future obligations when promise keeping is observable. This paper studies the value of transparency and asks whether promises still work if such transparency is missing. We focus on the context of campaign...

This paper investigates - in a large heterogeneous sample - the relationship between social preferences on the one hand, and socioeconomic factors and political preferences on the other hand. Socioeconomic factors correlate with social preferences, and social preferences robustly shape political...

There are many situations in which different groups make collective decisions by committee voting, with each group represented by a single person. A natural question is what voting system such a committee should use. Concepts based on voting power provide guidelines for this choice. The two most...