Theoretical and Experimental Research on Voting and Bargaining Games

该奖项是对政治经济学中关于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模型、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在非常复杂的交互环境中支撑行为的基本平衡力方面取得了巨大的进步。在理论方面，建立了详细的数学模型，以帮助理解和解释影响选民投票率、政治两极分化、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增强传统的经济分析，出现了许多新的和重要的见解。这些见解不仅有助于我们理解这些非常复杂的现象，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，有人类受试者参与的受控实验室环境被创造为与理论上模拟的情景现实平行的环境。这使得对该理论产生的假设进行了尖锐的测试，同时提供了详细的微观数据，从而能够衡量关键的驾驶行为变量，如风险厌恶和社会偏好。具体的研究包括三个研究领域：(1)公共产品的动态政治经济学；(2)投票权交易；(3)所得税、再分配和经济效率。第一个领域的研究是基于投票规则阴影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演变，当前的结果会影响未来谈判协议的机会。我们研究了公共投资的动态，以及投票规则和政治制度对经济效率的影响。第二个研究领域调查了不同的投票机制，这些机制产生了对偏好强度敏感的结果。特别是在这项研究中，我们正在调查投票交易和跨问题搜索的理论和行为特性。我们的目标是刻画稳定的投票分配，重点是存在、效率以及与多数偏好关系的比较。第三部分建立均衡模型，比较不同政治制度对所得税、再分配和经济效率的影响。然后对由这些理论模型产生的假设进行了实验研究。

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.