Collective Choice and Democracy

Transcription

1 Collective Choice and Democracy Jean-François Laslier APE Master, Fall Presentation In democracies, decisions are taken collectively, either directly or through delegation. The role of political institutions is to aggregate potentially divergent opinions and preferences into common decisions. This course is an introduction to the economic approach of collective decision making, both from the normative point of view of the theory of social choice, and from the positive point of view of game theory. Using both formal theory and empirical knowledge, we present some of the major results on the working of political institutions, in particular the behavior of voters and political parties. Then we consider their impact on several important policy dimensions (taxation, redistribution, the size of the government etc.), and on the comparative study of political systems. Assignments and Grade. The grade for this course is based on the oral presentation of an article in the list of recommended readings below. You can also come up with your choice of article. To help you with the class presentations, you can read these Notes on presenting a paper written by Matt Jackson, and available on his web-site Textbooks. There is a textbook for this course, in French. Since the course is given in English, I also provide references in English for each lecture. The book by Persson and Tabellini is a good complementary reading. 1. Le Vote et La Règle Majoritaire. Analyse Mathématique de la Politique by Jean-François Laslier. CNRS Editions, Political Economics by Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini. MIT Press, A set of exercises is available at: 1

2 Syllabus. follows. The class meets every Wednesday, 1:30 4:30 pm. The lectures are organized as 1. (September 11) Basics of Welfare Economics and Social Choice. Tutorial: On Utilitarianism, with Antonin Macé. Arrow (1952) Social Choice and Individual Values. Roemer (1996), Theories of Distributive Justice. D Aspremont and Gevers (2002) Social Welfare Functionals and Interpersonal Comparability in the Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare. 2. (September 18) Condorcet Politics Textbook, chapter 2. Précisions historiques available on the web site: 3. (September 25) One-dimensional Politics Textbook, chapter (October 2) Multi-dimensional Politics Textbook, chapters 4 and (October 9) Voting rules in practice Tutorial: On continuous signaling, with Yukio Koriyama. Blais et al. (2010) Sincere, Strategic, and Heuristic Voting under four Election Rules: An experimental study Social Choice and Welfare. 6. (October 23) Representation Textbook Chapter 7 Koriyama et al. (2013), Optimal apportionment, Journal of Political Economy. 7. (October 30) Student presentations 8. (November 6) Student presentations Bibliography Here is a list of papers, grouped by themes, that are used in class or that you can pick from for your presentation. (You are not limited to this list, but you should discuss your choice with the instructor.) 1. Utilitarianism Harsanyi (1955), Cardinal Welfare, Individualist Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility, Journal of Political Economy. Diamond (1967), Cardinal Welfare, Individualist Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility:Comment, Journal of Political Economy. 2

3 Weymark, A Reconsideration of the Harsanyi-Sen Debate on Utilitarianism, in Interpersonal Comparisons of Well-Being, Cambridge University Press Roemer (1996), Theories of Distributive Justice, Harvard University Press. C. d Aspremont and L. Gevers. (2002) Social Welfare Functionals and Interpersonal Comparability. In K.J. Arrow, A.K. Sen, and K. Suzumura, editors, Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare. Amsterdam: Elsevier. 2. Political Economy of redistribution H. Hotelling (1929) Stability in Competition Economic Journal K.W.S. Roberts (1977) Voting over income tax schedules Journal of Public Economics. A. Linbeck and J. Weibull (1987) Balanced budget redistribution and the outcome of political competition Public Choice. R.B. Myerson (1993) Incentives to cultivate favored minorities under alternative electoral systems American Political Science Review.. J.E. Roemer (1999) The democratic political economy of progressive income taxation Econometrica. JF Laslier and N. Picard (2002) Distributive politics and electoral competition Journal of Economic Theory. JF Laslier, A. Trannoy and K. Van der Straeten (2003) Voting under ignorance of job skills of unemployed: the overtaxation bias Journal of Public Economics. De Donder, Ph. et J. Hindrix (2004) Progressive income taxation with corner preferences Public Choice. Carbonell-Nicolau, O. and E. Ok (2007) Voting over income taxation Journal of Economic Theory. 3. Information cascades: experiments Anderson et Holt (1997) Information Cascades in the Laboratory American Economic Review. Hung and Plott (2001) Information Cascades: Replication American Economic Review. 4. Voting and Information Austen-Smith and Banks (1996) Information Aggregation, Rationality and the Condorcet Jury Theorem, American Political Science Review. Feddersen and Pesendorfer (1996) The Swing Voter s Curse, American Economic Review. Feddersen and Pesendorfer (1997) Voting Behavior and Information Aggregation in Elections with Private Information, Econometrica. Feddersen and Pesendorfer (1998) Convicting the Innocent: the Inferiority of Unanimous Jury Verdicts under Strategic Voting, American Political Science Review. 3

4 Laslier and Van der Straeten (2004), Electoral Competition under Imperfect Information Economic Theory. Heidhues and Lagerlof (2003) Hiding information in electoral competition Games and Economic Behavior. Koriyama and Szentes (2009) A resurrection of the Condorcet Jury Theorem Theoretical Economics. Bond and Eraslan (2010) Strategic Voting over Strategic Proposals, Review of Economic Studies. J. Goertz and F. Maniquet (2011). On the Informational Efficiency of Simple Scoring Rules. Journal of Economic Theory. L. Bouton and M. Castanheira (2012) One Person, Many Votes: Divided Majority and Information Aggregation. Econometrica. Godefroy and Perez-Richet (2012), Choosing Choices: Agenda Selection with Uncertain Issues, Econometrica. Laslier and Weibull (2012), An Incentive Compatible Condorcet Jury Theorem, Scandinavian Journal of Economics. 5. Deliberation Before Voting Austen-Smith and Feddersen (2006), Deliberation, Preference Uncertainty and Voting Rule, American Political Science Review. Austen-Smith and Feddersen (2005), Deliberation and Voting Rules, in Social Choice and Decisions, edited by D. Austen-Smith and J. Duggan, Springer. Gerardi and Yariv, Deliberative Voting, Journal of Economic Theory. Jackson and Tan (2012), Disclosure of Information, Deliberation and Voting, Journal of Economic Theory. Schulte (2010), Information Aggregation and Preference Heterogeneity in Committees Theory and Decision. Goeree and Yariv (2010) An Experimental Study of Collective Deliberation Econometrica 79: Voter s behavior in large elections Myerson and Weber (1993). A Theory of Voting Equilibria American Political Science Review. Myerson (1998) Extended Poisson Games and the Condorcet Jury Theorem Games and Economic Behavior. Myerson (2002) Comparison of Scoring Rules in Poisson Voting Games Journal of Economic Theory. Laslier (2009) The Leader rule: a model of strategic approval voting in a large electorate Journal of Theoretical Politics 4

5 7. Political Campaigns Prat (2002) Campaign Advertising and Voter Welfare Review of Economic Studies. Glaeser, Ponzetto, Shapiro (2005), Extremism: Why Republicans and Democrats Divide on Religious Values Quarterly Journal of Economics. Alesina and Holden (2008), Ambiguity and Extremism in Elections, working paper. Demange and Van der Straeten (2012) A Communication Game on Electoral Platforms, working paper. Gul and Pesendorfer (2012) The War of Information Review of Economic Studies. 8. Strategic candidacy Osborne and Slivinski (1996) A Model of Political Competition with Citizen Candidates, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 111, 1, Besley and Coate (1997) An Economic Model of Representative Democracy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112, 1, Dutta, Jackson and LeBreton (2001) Strategic Candidacy and Voting Procedures, Econometrica, 69, 4, Myerson (2008) The Autocrat s Credibility Problem and Foundations of the Constitutional State, American Political Science Review, 102, Bargaining and Logrolling Baron and Ferejohn (1989) Bargaining in Legislatures, American Political Science Review. Banks and Duggan (2000) A Bargaining Model of Colletive Choice, American Political Science Review. Bernheim, Rangel and Rayo (2006) The Power of the Last Word in Legislative Policy Making, Econometrica. Diermeier, D. and R. Morton (2005) Experiments in Majoritarian Bargaining, pp in Social Choice and Strategic Decisions, edited by D. Austen-Smith and J. Duggan, Springer. 10. Vote Buying and Lobbying Grossman and Helpman (1996) Electoral Competition and Special Interest Politics, Journal of Political Economy. Dixit, Grossman and Helpman (1997) Common Agency and Coordination: General Theory and Applications to Government Policy Making, Journal of Political Economy. Prat (2002) Campaign Spending with Office Seeking Politicians, Rational Voters and Multiple Lobbies, Journal of Economic Theory. Bernheim and Whinston, (2006) Menu Auctions, Resource Allocations and Economic Influence, Quarterly Journal of Economics. 5

6 Dekel, Jackson and Wolinsky (2008) Vote Buying: General Elections, Journal of Political Economy. 11. Participation: theory and evidence Palfrey and Rosenthal (1983) A Strategic Calculus of Voting Public Choice. André Blais (2000) To Vote Or Not To Vote? The Merits and Limits of Rational Choice, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Levine, D. and T. Palfrey (2007) The paradox of voter participation? study American Political Science Review 101: a laboratory A. Gerber, D. Green and C. Larimer (2008) Social Pressure and Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment American Political Science Review. See also Donald Green s web site: Experiments Richard D. McKelvey and Peter C. Ordeshook (1985) Rational expectations in elections: Some experimental results based on a multidimensional model Public Choice 44: R. Forsythe, T. A. Rietz, Roger Myerson and Robert J. Weber (1993) An Experiment on Coordination in Multicandidate Elections: the Importance of Polls and Election Histories Social Choice and Welfare 10: Laslier and Van der Straeten (2004) Vote par assentiment pendant la présidentielle de 2002: analyse d une expérience Revue Française de Science Politique. See in English: Laslier and Van der Straeten (2008) A live experiment on approval voting Experimental Economics. A. Blais, J.-F. Laslier, N. Sauger and K. Van der Straeten (2010) Sincere, Strategic, and Heuristic Voting under four Election Rules: An Experimental Study, Social Choice and Welfare 35: (2010). Van der Straeten, K, J.-F. Laslier and A. Blais (2012) Vote au Pluriel : How people vote when offered to vote under different rules? PS: Political Science and Politics. 13. Apportionment Penrose, Lionel S. (1946) The elementary statistics of majority voting Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 109, Barberà, Salvador and Matthew O. Jackson (2006) On the weights of nations: assigning voting weights in a heterogeneous union Journal of Political Economy 114: Felsenthal, Dan and Moshé Machover (1998) The Measurement of Voting Power, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Grimmet, G., F. Pukelsheim, J.-F. Laslier, V. Ramírez González, W. S lomczyński, M. Zachariasen, and K. Życzkowski (2011) The allocation between the EU Member States of the seats in the European Parliament: The Cambridge Compromise European Parliament Policy department, Constitutional affairs. Brussels: European Parliament Koriyama, Y., J.-F. Laslier, A. Macé and R. Treibich (2013), Optimal apportionment, Journal of Political Economy. 6

7 14. Nondemocratic Political Economy Acemoglu, Egorov and Sonin (2010), Political Selection and Persistence of Bad Governments, Quarterly Journal of Economics. Bates, Greif and Singh (2002) Organizing Violence, Journal of Conflict Resolution. Piccione and Rubinstein (2007) Equilibrium in the Jungle, Economic Journal. Egorov, Guriev and Sonin(2009) Why Resource-Poor Dictators Allow Freer Media: A Theory and Evidence from Panel Data American Political Science Review Egorov and Sonin (2012) The Killing Game: Reputation and Knowledge in Politics of Succession, working paper. 7