We experimentally investigate the Jackson-Moselle (2002) equilibrium. There will be a brief discussion of these results in Section IV where they help shape our understanding of the main treatment outcomes. Readers with particular interests in legislative bargaining models of the sort studied here are encouraged to read the appendix. (3) There is significant proposer power, but it is typically far from the level predicted under the stationary subgame perfect equilibrium (SSPE) prediction.
I. Previous Research on MultilateralClosely related to (3) is that allocations with proposer power at, or near, the level predicted under the SSPE would be voted down with near certainty. using public goods to obtain willing coalition partners. Further, in the mixed region where both public and private goods are provided, as the relative value of public good decreases, the model predicts, somewhat counter intuitively, that a larger budget share will be allocated to the public good. Fréchette, Kagel and Morelli (2012) show that the experimental data are largely consistent with this first prediction, as within the mixed region allocations converge toward private goods being provided exclusively to the proposer. However, the public good's share of the budget decreases as the value of the public good decreases, contrary to the model's prediction. Depending on the proposer's type, either private goods or public goods will be used to secure legislative compromise, and to form a minimum winning coalition, with both of these outcomes observed in the data. Several unpredicted results are reported as well, including clear breakdowns of the stationarity assumption when private good preferring types propose to take too much for themselves, as they get significantly smaller payoffs following rejection of their proposed allocations.In the Volden-Wiseman (VM) version of the BF legislative bargaining model pork and public goods are funded from a common budget with the model focusing on the tradeoffs in the budget allocation process between public and private goods. The public component of the JM model consists of either a public policy proposal with an ideological component (e.g., limits on abortion rights or gay marriage), which the VM model is not equipped to deal with, or a proposal to fund the public good as in the VM model. In terms of funding levels for the public 5 Battaglini et al. (in press) investigate a dynamic legislative bargaining model with durable public goods in which all players have the same utility function which is linear in the private good with an additively separable concave utility function for the public good.good, funds for private goods are exogenous in the JM model, so one can think of the trade-off in the budget process as between funding a given public good and funding other public goods, or funding a given public good but one that also has local benefits (e.g., the location of a military base has additional economic benefits largely confined to the legislative district in which it is located). The downside ...
When a legislature bargains over funds for pork and public goods, and the funds come from a common budget, increased spending on the public good means greater payoff equality since it comes at the expense of pork. This paper explores whether inequity aversion then leads to greater public goods spending. Using both theory and a laboratory experiment we show inequity aversion generally decreases inequity within a coalition by limiting proposer power. However, this does not always mean greater public goods contributions because the types of proposals passed change in equilibrium. In addition, the experiment investigates the theoretical prediction that increasing players' relative preference for pork can increase public goods contributions. We show that while average public goods contributions remain unchanged, there is evidence at the individual level that subjects hold out for higher public goods contributions as predicted.
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