Political Economy Experiments: Introduction

What motivates bandwagon voting behavior: Altruism or a desire to win?

“…They conclude that, as predicated, although sequential voting tends to be more informationally and economically efficient than simultaneous voting, later voters benefit at the expense of early voters, so there is a cost in terms of equity. Morton andWilliams (1999, 2000) consider incomplete information but in a private value context with three candidates. They examine two principal concerns about the voting process and compare the efficiency and social welfare between simultaneous and sequential voting when voters have different underlying preferences over candidates (private values) but incomplete information.…”

“…In addition, the controlled laboratory environment helps to identify the "clean" treatment effects, because the experimenters can control the information voters have about the candidates and the way in which this information is provided. 4 Morton andWilliams (1999, 2000) show with theoretical arguments as well as experimental evidence that in environments with symmetric information, sequential elections may help voters to coordinate on superior candidates, and therefore improve the ability of the electoral system to aggregate preferences. 5…”

“…Special care was taken by the experimenters to make sure that subjects made their decisions simultaneously while behind the privacy 12 We flip a coin to determine the winner. 13 An extensive discussion on the effects of privacy on voter choices can be found in Morton andOu (2013, 2014). screens and were not able to change their decisions after observing others' choices.…”

Discussion and Fairness in a Laboratory Voting Experiment

“…Becky Morton was a pioneer, advocate, and mentor in the field of experimental political economy, a tradition our experiment continues. That is, we explore substantive questions in political science using tools from experimental economics (Morton, 2014), linking theory and experiment (Morton, 1999). Examining human behavior in a controlled lab environment allows us to establish causal relationships and to uncover the underpinnings of political behavior and their implications for the choices that actors make under various circumstances (Morton and Williams, 2010, 10-11).…”