Experimental Public Choice

Schram, Arthur

doi:10.1007/978-0-306-47828-4_8

“…Thus our results indicate that neither efficiency nor other-regarding preferences is a real concern for participants acting as a planner: in both Planner treatments, individual choices do not differ significantly from group choices. Yet under the Voting treatment we observe -in line with previous literature (Schram, 2004) -a mild positive correlation between the group choice and the median of individual choices (Pearson correlation of 0.43).…”

Section: Robustnesssupporting

confidence: 74%

Patience and time consistency in collective decisions

Denant-Boèmont

¹

,

Diecidue

²

,

l’Haridon

³

2016

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We present experimental evidence regarding individual and group decisions over time. Static and longitudinal methods are combined to test four conditions on time preferences: impatience, stationarity, age independence, and dynamic consistency. Decision making in groups should favor coordination via communication about voting intentions. We find that individuals are neither patient nor consistent, that groups are both patient and highly consistent, and that information exchange between participants helps groups converge to stable decisions. Finally we provide additional evidence showing that our results are driven by the specific role of groups and not by either repeated choices or individual preferences when choosing for other subjects.JEL codes: C92, D90, D03.Keywords: Time Preferences, Dynamic Consistency, present-bias, Group Decisions. * We thank Aurelien Baillon, Nicolas Houy, Vincent Merlin, Amnon Rapoport, Jeeva Somasundaram, Karine Van Der Straeten, Marie-Claire Villeval and Peter Wakker for helpful comments. We also thank Elven Priour for programming the script and organizing the sessions.

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“…Thus our results indicate that neither efficiency nor other-regarding preferences is a real concern for participants acting as a planner: in both Planner treatments, individual choices do not differ significantly from group choices. Yet under the Voting treatment we observe -in line with previous literature (Schram, 2004 Individual impatience differed between the main and both the repetition and the Informed planner treatments. In the latter treatment, the greater impatience observed when an individual member is deciding for the group -based on one straw poll of member preferences -might well be due to a composition effect.…”

Section: Robustnesssupporting

confidence: 91%

Patience and Time Consistency in Collective Decisions

Denant-Boèmont

¹

,

Diecidue

²

,

l’Haridon

³

2013

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We present experimental evidence regarding individual and group decisions over time. Static and longitudinal methods are combined to test four conditions on time preferences: impatience, stationarity, age independence, and dynamic consistency. Decision making in groups should favor coordination via communication about voting intentions. We find that individuals are neither patient nor consistent, that groups are both patient and highly consistent, and that information exchange between participants helps groups converge to stable decisions. Finally we provide additional evidence showing that our results are driven by the specific role of groups and not by either repeated choices or individual preferences when choosing for other subjects.

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“…According to Plott, Public Choice led to a major transition in the use of lab experiments; changing the focus from private sector phenomena such as markets, oligopoly, or matrix games to the public sector and testing a new set of theories focusing on institutional details, new environments, and new approaches to policy. Schram (2004) recalls that the European Public Choice Society explicitly stated its interest in experimental studies. According to him, two types of experimental studies are important for Public Choice: the ones concerned with individual behavior and motivations, and the ones that use experiments to analyze a number of traditional Public Choice topics such as public goods, voter turnout and participation, rent‐seeking and lobbying, or spatial voting.…”

Section: Experimental Research In Public Choice and Law And Economicsmentioning

confidence: 99%