Pork Versus Public Goods: An Experimental Study of Public Good Provision Within a Legislative Bargaining Framework

We experimentally investigate a legislative bargaining model with both public and particularistic goods. Consistent with the qualitative implications of the model: There is near exclusive public good provision in the pure public good region, in the pure private good region minimum winning coalitions sharing private goods predominate, and in the ‘mixed’ region proposers generally take some particularistic goods for themselves, allocating the remainder to public goods. As in past experiments, proposer ower is not nearly as strong as predicted, resulting in public good provision decreasing in the mixed region as its relative value increases, which is inconsistent with the theory.Legislative Bargaining, Public Goods, Efficiency

Bargaining in Legislatures: An Experimental Investigation of Open versus Closed Amendment Rules

We investigate the Baron and Ferejohn (1989) noncooperative game theoretic bargaining model of legislative equilibrium. Legislative outcomes are sensitive to formal rules specifying who may make proposals and how they will be voted on. With a random proposal recognition rule and a closed amendment rule (proposals are voted up or down with no room for amendments) the model predicts no delays in benefit allocation, that benefits will be allocated to a minimal winning coalition, and that benefits within the coalition will be strongly skewed in favor of the proposer. In contrast, with a random proposal recognition rule and an open amendment rule (proposals may be amended before they are voted on) the model predicts delays in benefit allocation, that benefits will be more evenly spread among winning coalition members, and that coalitions need not be restricted to a minimal majority. With experience we find strong qualitative support for the model's predictions: All proposals are passed without delay with the closed rule versus 81% of all proposals with the open rule. Minimal winning coalitions are effectively proposed in 67% of all cases with the closed rule versus 4% with the open rule, and benefits are more evenly distributed with open rule. Quantitative predictions of the model fail however: Most importantly, proposers consistently fail to allocate themselves anything close to what the theory predicts. Further, the probability of immediate acceptance is much higher than predicted in the open rule as proposers consistently expand the winning coalition beyond the model's prediction in attempts to limit amendments. The evolution of play over time is reported (outcomes under both treatments are much more similar early on then later). Tests show that subjects' votes in favor of a proposed allocation are significantly affected by their own share (in the expected direction) but that the distribution of shares across all voters has no significant effect.

The impact of monitoring in infinitely repeated games: Perfect, public, and private

This paper uses a laboratory experiment to study the effect of a monitoring structure on the play of the infinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma. Keeping the stage game fixed, we examine the behavior of subjects when information about past actions is perfect (perfect monitoring), noisy but public (public monitoring), and noisy and private (private monitoring). We find that the subjects sustain cooperation in every treatment, but that their strategies differ substantially in the three treatments. Specifically, we observe that the strategies are more complex under public and private monitoring than under perfect monitoring. We also find that the strategies under private monitoring are more lenient than under perfect monitoring, and less forgiving than under public monitoring

Incumbents’ Interests, Voters’ Bias and Gender Quotas

The adoption of gender quotas in party lists has been a voluntary decision by many parties in many countries, and is now a subject of discussion in many others. The Parity Law passed in France in 2001 is particularly interesting because for the first time the quota was set at 50 percent, and the deputies passing the reform are elected in single member districts. In this paper we rationalize parity on thd basis of the self interest of male incumbent deputies. The existence of a voters’ bias in favor of male candidates is sufficient to convince the incumbents to advocate for equal gender representation in party lists, because it raises the incumbents’ chance of being re-elected. We confirm empirically the existence of male bias in the French electorate and we show that parity law may have Assembly composition effects and policy effects that vary with the electoral system.

Handbook of experimental economic methodology

viii, 477 hlm. : ilus. ; tab. ; 26 cm

How Robust is Laboratory Gift Exchange?

The gift-exchange game is a form of sequential prisoner’s dilemma, developed by Fehr, Kirchsteiger, and Riedl (1993), and popularized in a series of papers by Ernst Fehr and co-authors. While the European studies typically feature a high degree of gift exchange, the few U.S. studies provide some conflicting results. We find that the degree of gift exchange is surprisingly sensitive to an apparently innocuous change—whether or not a comprehensive payoff table is provided in the instructions. We also find significant and substantial time trends in responder behavior