Theoretical and Experimental Research on Voting and Bargaining Games

该奖项是对政治经济学中互动战略行为的几个基本开放问题的研究。该方法结合了传统的经济建模，博弈论的数学工具，和实验室实验来研究投票行为和讨价还价行为。 在过去的几十年里，理论和实验经济学家的研究在理解非常复杂的互动环境中行为背后的基本均衡力量方面取得了巨大进展。在理论方面，详细的数学模型已经被开发出来，以帮助理解和解释影响选民投票率，政治极化，委员会决策，多边谈判以及政治经济学领域相关现象的各种微妙因素。通过用博弈论的正式理论框架来扩充传统的经济分析，出现了许多新的重要见解。这些见解不仅有助于我们理解这些非常复杂的现象，而且还为如何改进谈判协议、投票方法和集体决策机构提供了指导。在实验方面，与人类受试者参与的受控实验室环境被创建为理论上建模的情况的现实平行。这允许对理论产生的假设进行尖锐的测试，同时提供详细的微观数据，以测量风险规避和社会偏好等关键驾驶行为变量。具体研究内容包括：（1）公共产品的动态政治经济学;（2）投票权交易;（3）所得税、再分配与经济效率。第一个领域的研究是基于投票规则下的重复讨价还价模型。谈判过程的结果会随着时间的推移而变化，当前的结果会影响未来谈判协议的机会。我们研究公共投资的动态以及投票规则和政治制度对经济效率的影响。研究的第二个领域调查不同的投票机制，产生的结果敏感的偏好强度。特别是对于这项研究，我们正在调查的理论和行为特性的投票交易和logrolling跨问题。我们的目标是稳定的投票分配的特点，专注于存在性，效率，并比较多数偏好关系。本项目的第三部分建立了均衡模型，比较不同政治制度对所得税、再分配和经济效率的影响。从这些理论模型产生的假设，然后进行实验研究。

This award is for research on several fundamental open questions about interactive strategic behavior in political economy. The approach combines traditional economic modeling, mathematical tools of game theory, and laboratory experiments to study voting behavior and bargaining behavior. In the last few decades, research by theoretical and experimental economists has made tremendous progress in understanding the basic equilibrium forces that underlie behavior in very complex interactive environments. On the theoretical side, detailed mathematical models have been developed to help understand and explain the diverse and subtle factors that affect voter turnout, political polarization, committee decision making, multilateral bargaining, and related phenomena in the realm of political economy. By augmenting traditional economic analysis with the formal theoretical framework of game theory, many new and important insights have emerged. These insights not only help us understand these very complex phenomena, but also provide guidance for how to improve bargaining protocols, voting methods, and collective decision making institutions. On the experimental side, controlled laboratory environments with human subject participants are created as realistic parallels of the situations being modeled theoretically. This allows sharp tests of the hypotheses generated by the theory, and at the same time provides detailed micro-data to enable the measurement of key driving behavioral variables such as risk aversion and social preferences. This in turn feeds back to the theoretical modeling in order to fine-tune the theories to more closely match observed behavior.The specific research to be undertaken encompasses three research areas: (1) The Dynamic Political Economy of Public Goods; (2) Vote Trading; and (3) Income Taxation, Redistribution, and Economic Efficiency. The research in the first area is based on repeated bargaining models under the shadow of a voting rule. Outcomes of the bargaining process evolve over time, with current outcomes affecting opportunities for future bargaining agreements. We study the dynamics of public investment and the effects of voting rules and political institutions on economic efficiency. The second area of study investigates different voting mechanisms that produce outcomes sensitive to preference intensity. Specifically for this study, we are investigating the theoretical and behavioral properties of vote trading and logrolling across issues. We aim to characterize stable vote allocations, focusing on existence, efficiency, and comparison to the majority preference relation. The third part of the project develops equilibrium models to compare the effects of different political institutions on income taxation, redistribution and economic efficiency. The hypotheses generated from these theoretical models are then investigated experimentally.