Property Rights, Collective Action, and Public Choice: An Experimental Study

该奖项是根据2009年《美国复苏和再投资法案》(Public Law 111-5)资助的。这项研究的前提是，一个社会的繁荣在一定程度上取决于财产是否足够安全，因此投资于生产，而不是投资于保护自己的财产不被盗或从事盗窃，是一个有吸引力的选择。本研究采用实验室决策实验的方法，受试者在生产、盗窃、私有财产保护和集体财产保护四种活动中重复做出分配代币的决定。在实验的一些版本中，受试者被要求投票决定分配给集体财产保护的金额是否应该以强制性的方式由多数票决定。受试者的动机是在实验结束时将他们的代币兑换成真钱的前景。强制性集体保护反映了公共治安和法院系统，比严格的私人保护更有效率。当财产保护依赖于自愿努力时，预计大多数个人都会在这些努力上有所节制，试图搭乘其他人的努力。搭便车的问题可以通过强制拨款来解决，在这种制度下提出建议时，没有动机低估期望的保护水平。在四个不同国家(美国、德国、墨西哥和蒙古)的受试者中进行了实验，以测试选择，包括关于使用强制性制度和集体保护水平的选择，是否在不同的人口之间存在系统性差异，这可能有助于解释欠发达国家财产安全较低的原因。近几十年来，这种实验方法越来越受欢迎，但到目前为止，它在产权问题上的应用还很少，几乎没有关于产权机构出现的研究，也没有跨国研究。该项目将有助于培训来自墨西哥和蒙古的博士生。它将推动布朗大学和其他地点的实验社会科学的发展。结果将被写在科学研究论文中，并向普通读者和政策制定者描述。该项目应有助于更好地了解产权及其在不同社会中的可变性，对试图制定更好政策以促进贫穷国家经济发展的社会科学家和政策制定者具有特别的价值。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).The premise of this research is that a society's prosperity hinges in part on property being sufficiently secure from theft so that investing in production, rather than investing in protecting one's property from theft or engaging in theft, is an attractive alternative. The research employs the method of laboratory decision-making experiments in which subjects make repeated sets of decisions between allocating tokens among four activities: production, theft, private property protection, and collective property protection. In some versions of the experiment, subjects are asked to vote on whether the amount allocated to collective property protection should be determined in a mandatory way by majority vote. Subjects are motivated by the prospect of converting their tokens to real money at the end of the experiments. Mandatory collective protection mirrors public policing and court systems and is more efficient than strictly private protection. When protection of property depends on voluntary efforts, most individuals are expected to skimp on these efforts, trying to free ride on the efforts of others. This problem of free riding can be resolved by making allocations mandatory, and there is no incentive to understate the desired level of protection when making proposals under such a system. Experiments are conducted with subjects in four different countries (U.S., Germany, Mexico, Mongolia) to test whether choices, including those with regard to using the mandatory system and the level of collective protection, vary systematically from one population to another, possibly helping to explain lower security of property in less developed countries. The experimental method has increased in popularity in recent decades but its application to the question of property rights has thus far been minimal, with almost no study of emergence of property rights institutions and no cross-national study. The project will contribute to the training of doctoral candidates from Mexico and Mongolia. It will advance the development of experimental social science at Brown University and at the other sites. The results will be written up in scientific research papers and described for general and policy-maker audiences. The project should help to put the understanding of property rights and their variability across societies on a sounder footing, with particular value to social scientists and policy-makers attempting to fashion better policies to foster the economic development of poor countries.