When collective ignorance is bliss: Theory and experiment on voting for learning

Ginzburg, Boris; Guerra, José-Alberto

doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2018.10.010

Cited by 5 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(16 reference statements)

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“…An important exception are the results ofPalacios-Huerta and Volij (2009), who argue that failure of backward induction is due to a lack of common knowledge of rationality, andBaghestanian and Frey (2016), who replicate the findings in the former paper with GO instead of chess players 3. The most important exception is a growing literature on the use of mixed strategies in professional sports.…”

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confidence: 92%

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Backward Induction in the Wild? Evidence from Sequential Voting in the US Senate

Spenkuch

Montagnes

Magleby

2018

American Economic Review

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In the US Senate, roll calls are held in alphabetical order. We document that senators early in the order are less likely to vote with the majority of their own party than those whose last name places them at the end of the alphabet. To speak to the mechanism behind this result, we develop a simple model of sequential voting, in which forward-looking senators rely on backward induction in order to free ride on their colleagues. Estimating our model structurally, we find that this form of strategic behavior is an important part of equilibrium play. We also consider, but ultimately dismiss, alternative explanations related to learning about common values and vote buying. (JEL D72, D82, D83)

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confidence: 92%

“…Tests of fundamental game-theoretical concepts outside of the laboratory, however, are scant. 3 It remains, therefore, unknown to which extent failures of backward reasoning generalize to other, real-world contexts.…”

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confidence: 99%

Backward Induction in the Wild? Evidence from Sequential Voting in the US Senate

Spenkuch

Montagnes

Magleby

2018

American Economic Review

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“…Bolton and Faure‐Grimaud (2009), Canen (2018), Chan et al. (2018), and Ginzburg and Guerra (2019) also model deliberation as a learning process, but they address different issues. Although the informational structure in Bolton and Faure‐Grimaud (2009) is similar to ours, their focus is on individual deliberation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our focus being instead on the occurrence and impact of obstruction, we assume that the final vote must be taken before a fixed deadline. Like us, Ginzburg and Guerra (2019) make a distinction between the decision to adopt a reform and the decision to acquire information about that reform. In their model, however, information acquisition is an all-or-nothing proposition: The committee either chooses to immediately learn the type of the reform with certainty or not to learn anything about the reform.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deciding When to Decide: Collective Deliberation and Obstruction

Anesi

Safronov

2022

Int Economic Review

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We study the impact of deliberation rules on collective learning and decision making in committees. In contrast to much of the existing literature, this article makes a distinction between the final votes over policy proposals and the cloture votes that bring them about. We show how deliberation rules can cause Paretoinefficient outcomes and failures to bring good proposals to a final vote, and how they affect the distribution of power among committee members in the deliberative process. We further show that deliberation rules are dynamically stable, even when they generate Pareto-inefficient outcomes.

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“…More generally, a number of experimental studies have looked at the role of pro-social preferences in inducing members of voting bodies to vote for proposals that affect the payoffs of others, such as redistribution(Agranov and Palfrey, 2015;Lefgren et al, 2016) and information acquisition(Ginzburg and Guerra, 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%