Give Everybody a Voice! The Power of Voting in a Public Goods Experiment with Externalities

Engel, Christoph; Rockenbach, Bettina

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2519479

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…We cluster standard errors at the group level 16. The results presented inTable 3are qualitatively similar if we instead use OLS regression analysis.…”

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confidence: 66%

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The perils of democracy

DeAngelo¹,

Dubois²,

Romaniuc³

2020

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

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In this work we examine a common social dilemma in experimental economics, the public goods game, to determine how voting impacts pro-social behavior. As noted in Markussen, Putterman & Tyran (2014, Review of Economic Studies), a democratic dividend exists. Couching the public goods game in a phenomenon that is playing out in much of the world-drastic income inequality-we examine the decision of groups to share local public goods with groups that have, effectively, no endowment to contribute toward public nor private consumption. Our results show the perils of democracy in that subjects in the position to vote use their advantageous situation to reward the ingroups at the expense of the less endowed outgroup members. * For valuable insights at various stages of this work, we thank the participants at the Pittsburgh Experimental Economics Lab meeting, the Experimental Public Choice Workshop in Lille, the Law and Economics Workshop in Florence and the Public Choice meetings in Charleston. We thank the Catholic University of Lille for the financial support.

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“…We cluster standard errors at the group level 16. The results presented inTable 3are qualitatively similar if we instead use OLS regression analysis.…”

mentioning

confidence: 66%

“…15 As such, we can think of the coefficients for each of the treatments variables as the average treatment effect. 16 Column 1 of Table 3 utilizes the full sample to assess the impact of the separate treatments.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The perils of democracy

DeAngelo¹,

Dubois²,

Romaniuc³

2020

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

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“…Others have studied public good environments where non‐contributing outsiders are affected. Engel and Rockenbach () consider a public goods experiment where there are passive players who experience an externality from the contributions of active group members, either a positive or negative spillover . Before the beginning of a second phase, a nonbinding vote is included regarding contributions, not knowing which role they will take.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Individual Competence and Committee Decision Making: Experimental Evidence

McCannon

Walker

2020

Southern Economic Journal

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Committee decision making relies on the competence of its members. The individual's competence is driven by the pre‐meeting efforts. These investments constitute a public good and, consequently, free riding is a concern. We build off of previous theoretical results which point out that as committees grow in size, free riding becomes more severe. However, experimental and empirical research suggests that individuals are willing to make voluntary contributions. This motivation should lead to increased effort when the number who benefit increases. To differentiate between these hypotheses we explore experimentally the effect that changes in group size have on competence investment decisions in a committee setting. Decision problems differ by whether the expansion increases the number of voters on the committee or the number who are affected by the committee's decision. We find evidence supporting the hypothesis that as committees grow in size there is a reduction in effort invested. We find some evidence of an adverse reaction to non‐contributing beneficiaries is observed as well. Heterogeneous responses arise and are explored.

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Intergroup inequality and the breakdown of prosociality

et al. 2019

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Each year about 60 million people flee their home country and seek to cross into developed countries, thus urging the latter to develop different policy responses to face the growing concerns about how immigration may affect social order. We design a novel two-part public goods experiment with radical income asymmetry between groups to investigate how voting on (not) helping less-endowed others affects pro-social behavior in the voting groups. We find that no group ever votes to help less-endowed ones. This, in turn, results in a breakdown of prosociality within the voting groups. We study the reasons why the implementation of voting-compared to no voting or to imposed solidarity-results in a significant, negative impact on cooperation levels within the voting groups.

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Give Everybody a Voice! The Power of Voting in a Public Goods Experiment with Externalities

Cited by 3 publications

References 21 publications

The perils of democracy

The perils of democracy

Individual Competence and Committee Decision Making: Experimental Evidence

Intergroup inequality and the breakdown of prosociality

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