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We investigate lying behavior when lying is undetectable and payoffs are split with charity. 524 participants roll a die in private, report the outcome, and receive the monetary equivalent of their reported number, i.e., there is a clear incentive to lie. Participants are randomly assigned to share all, some, or none of this payoff with a charity of their choice. This allows us to examine how lying behavior changes with the share of payoffs going to charity. Our results are as follows: (i) there are participants in every group who lie to inflate their reported number; (ii) overall lying behavior is significant for all groups, except that in which participants keep none of the payoff; and (iii) post-experiment surveys reveal that participants who keep the whole payoff are much less likely to admit to having cheated than all other participants. Finally, our data suggests that lying is not correlated with any observable sociodemographic characteristic.

List experiments are a widely used survey technique for estimating the prevalence of socially sensitive attitudes or behaviors. Their design, however, makes them vulnerable to bias: because treatment group respondents see a greater number of items (J + 1) than control group respondents (J), the treatment group mean may be mechanically inflated due simply to the greater number of items. The few previous studies that directly examine this do not arrive at definitive conclusions. We find clear evidence of inflation in an original dataset, though only among respondents with low educational attainment. Furthermore, we use available data from previous studies and find similar heterogeneous patterns. The evidence of heterogeneous effects has implications for the interpretation of previous research using list experiments, especially in developing world contexts. We recommend a simple solution: using a necessarily false placebo statement for the control group equalizes list lengths, thereby protecting against mechanical inflation without imposing costs or altering interpretations.

Much has been written about politicians’ preferences for electoral systems, yet little is known about the preferences of voters. In 1993, New Zealand had a binding electoral referendum on the same day as the general election where voters chose between keeping a single plurality system (First Past the Post) or introducing a pure proportional one (Mixed Member Proportional). This paper merges data from all nationwide polling stations to Census data on local voters to examine what drives citizens’ preferences for an electoral system. We find that strategic partisan interest was a key driver: voters overwhelmingly preferred the system that most benefited their favorite party. However, socioeconomic characteristics and social values also mattered; people who held more progressive values, were outside the dominant religion and lived in urban areas were much more likely to vote to change to a proportional system. Survey data show that these findings hold at the individual level, and further, that individuals who were angry with the economy were much more likely to vote against the status quo, regardless of their background, party preferences or social values. This behavior is likely to have ultimately balanced the result in favor of Mixed Member Proportional.

This paper investigates what drives countries to legislate presumed consent – making citizens organ donors by default unless they opt out – instead of explicit consent. Results reveal the following: First, civil law predicts presumed consent, which uncovers a mechanism by which an institution that long pre-dates transplantation medicine has an impact on current health outcomes. This is in line with previous research that has found that civil law regimes tend to be more comfortable with a centralized and activist government than common law ones. Second, Catholicism predicts presumed consent. This is consistent with previous research that shows Catholicism generally relies on more hierarchical structures and is less likely to encourage social responsibility among its members. Last, higher pro-social behavior decreases the likelihood of presumed consent. This could be explained by policy-makers trying not to discourage donations where pro-social behavior is high by making it look a requirement rather than an altruistic act. The implications of the findings are discussed, with a particular focus on policy-switches in organ donations.

This paper addresses voting decisions and their rationalization ex post. It uses survey data from seven different general elections in Germany, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Israel. Results uncover the following patterns: all voters place themselves very close in ideological terms to the party they vote for. Once we control for education, we find that less educated voters place themselves systematically close to the party they vote for, regardless of how far they are from it objectively. This suggests that some voters may suffer from cognitive dissonance once the voting decision is made, and overcome it by adjusting their own position with respect to the party position. Panel data from New Zealand further suggests that loyal voters of a party also tend to perceive themselves ideologically much closer to that party than what they really are, regardless of their education levels. Furthermore, it shows that they minimize ideological distance by placing themselves in the ideological position of their chosen party, instead of choosing to believe that the party holds their own views. Finally, this paper proposes a decision making model that accounts for these patterns, and discusses the medium and long run implications that this kind of behavior may have regarding the polarization of voters in a country.

This paper studies voting behavior in proportional representation systems. It proposes a model in which coalition formation cannot be accurately predicted once the distribution of seats in parliament is known. Voters care about policy outcomes, and are all assumed to be strategic. Identical agents who expect extremely similar electoral outcomes but expect different coalitions have radically opposed strategies. The model is tested against empirical data from Israel, 2006. Results suggest that agents with similar preferences who have reasonably similar expectations regarding the distribution of votes may use different voting strategies precisely when expect different coalitions. The implications of this are discussed.

This paper explores the drivers of female participation in formal politics in Myanmar. Using data from a proprietary survey collected during September--December, 2019 (N=2889) in the states of Mon, Mandalay, Shan, and Ayeyarwady, we shed light on the following three questions: (i) What explains self-confidence to participate in politics?; (ii) What explains support for women participation in politics?; and (iii) What explains support for own daughters participation in politics? The focus of this research is to examine which factors affect differently men and women. Results show that past life experience such as physical abuse as kids have markedly different effects on men and women in the long run. Formal education, marital status, and perceptions on safety also have differential effects.

This paper measures the relative importance of party platforms versus expected policy outcomes in the voting decisions of individuals in a proportional representation (PR) system. It uses survey pre-electoral data from the 2006 Israeli elections. This survey is critical as it provides a set of questions on perceived likelihood and support for different potential coalitions that is unique in its richness and scope I find that the proportion of policy voters is slightly below 10\%. This is smaller than the proportion found in previous studies. The key to explaining this difference is the fact that this paper uses individual subjective perceptions about party platforms and likelihood of the different coalitions. Critically, it is shown that the inclusion of such subjective perceptions in the model improves the fit. Finally, there seems to be no correlation between policy voting and sociodemographics.

Māori in New Zealand have the right to choose which electorate to vote in: they can choose to vote in a 'General district' (with other Maori and all non-Māori), or to vote in a 'Māori district', where only Māori are allowed to register. Every five years there is a period known as Māori Electoral Option, during which Māori are given the option to either stay in their current district or switch. This offers an ideal setting to analyze whether Māori voters strategically choose to register where they expect the race to be closer. To that avail, I use data from two Māori Electoral Options, two general elections, and two censuses. Results suggest that only a very small fraction of Māori (less than 2%) seem to respond to the strategic incentives described. Two forces seem to play a much larger role in enrollment choices: cultural allegiances and socioeconomic status. Māori with a stronger sense of Māori identity and Maori living in socially disadvantaged areas tend to overwhelmingly enroll in the Māori districts. The implications of these results are discussed.

This article presents a unified framework that allows us to disentangle to what extent agents in proportional representation (PR) systems engage in the different strategies that the available voting models have separately suggested: ‘party’, ‘coalitional’, ‘bandwagon’ and ‘other’ voting (i.e. neither of the previous three). Results using data from multiple countries reveal that at least 75% of agents cast a sincere party vote. Around 10% of voters try to affect policymaking by casting a coalitional vote. Since most coalitional agents use their vote to ‘push’ coalitions away from the centre, extreme parties are the most benefited. Hence, strategic coalitional voting may increase rather than preclude fragmentation of a party system in PR contexts. Another 5% of voters support the expected winner regardless of their own party and coalition preferences. Finally, 5–10% of voters fall into the category of other types. The characteristics and motivations of each type are uncovered. Political sophistication increases the likelihood of sincere and coalitional voting. On the other hand, dissatisfaction with parties voted for in the past increases other voting. In particular, recent growth of European right-wing nationalist parties is shown to rely more on other voting and less on sincere and coalitional support.

We investigate lying behavior when lying is undetectable and payoffs are split with charity. 524 Participants are randomly assigned to share all, some, or none of the payoff with a charity of their choice. The payoff earned depends on the number participants report after rolling a die in private (i.e., there are clear incentives to lie). This allows us to examine lying behavior as the share of the payoffs to charity gradually increases. Our results are as follows: (i) participants in all groups lie to inflate their number; (ii) lying decreases drastically when the charity is the sole recipient; and (iii) post-experiment surveys reveal that those participants who are most likely to have lied are the least likely to admit it. Finally, our data suggests that lying is not correlated with any observable sociodemographic characteristic.

This paper proposes a framework to assess whether there is strategic abstention in proportional representation (PR) systems. Strategic abstention occurs when instrumental voters who believe the race is extremely close choose to abstain. Drawing from Blais (2006), the assumption is that the race between coalitions (and not between parties) is what ultimately matters. The main predictions are two: (i) voters who expect the race to be neck-and-neck are more likely to abstain when they cannot express a strong preference for any of the two leading coalitions; and (ii) preferences over coalitions no longer explains turnout among voters who believe one of the coalitions is clearly ahead. In order to test them, I use pre-electoral survey data from five different elections in three different countries (Austria, Germany, and Israel). Results strongly support both predictions. Finally, this paper also shows that uncertainty regarding which coalitions may be formed decreases turnout. Taken together, these results suggest that, in PR systems, coalition expectations play a key role in the decision to vote or not.

The goal of this note is to re-interpret and further analyze the results of Bargsted and Kedar (2009). BK use pre-electoral survey data for the 2006 Israeli legislative elections, and argue that a non-negligible set of individuals cast their vote in order to affect government formation and policy outcomes. Strategic considerations affect the likelihood of voting for Kadima, Labour or Likud, but not smaller parties. I contend that (i) what they are capturing is indistinguishable from a bandwagon effect, and (ii) their findings rely on the particular specification of the proxy for ‘expected coalition’ they use. I carry out the same exercise as BK using an extra set of controls for expected number of seats and an alternative specification of the proxy for expected coalition. My results show two interesting patterns. First, expected seats seem to be more important in voters' strategies than coalition considerations. Second, there seems to be a compensatory strategic behavior among voters, as opposed to BK: increased likelihood of a rightist (leftist) coalition induces voters to vote less for rightist (leftist) parties. Finally, this note shows that model performance is significantly increased when using each of these two new variables, independently or together. These findings support the inclusion of such variables in all models which empirically assess strategic coalition voting behavior.

List experiments are a widely used survey technique for estimating the prevalence of socially sensitive attitudes or behaviors. Their design, however, makes them vulnerable to bias: because treatment group respondents see a greater number of items (J+1) than control group respondents (J), the treatment group mean may be mechanically inflated due simply to the greater number of items. The few previous studies that directly examine this do not arrive at definitive conclusions. We find clear evidence of inflation in an original dataset, though only among respondents with low educational attainment. Furthermore, we use available data from previous studies and find similar heterogeneous patterns. The evidence of heterogeneous effects has implications for the interpretation of previous research using list experiments, especially in developing world contexts. We recommend a simple solution: using a necessarily false placebo statement for the control group equalizes list lengths, thereby protecting against mechanical inflation without imposing costs or altering interpretations.

Is there more sincere voting in multi-member districts than in single-member districts? Existing research on this question is inconclusive, at least in part because it is difficult with observational data to isolate the effect of district magnitude on voting behavior independently from voters’ preferences or the number of parties. Hence, we investigate this issue in a laboratory experiment, where we vary district magnitude while keeping the distribution of voters’ preferences and the number of parties constant. We find that voting for the preferred party (sincere voting) increases with district magnitude. This is consistent with existing findings from observational data. We also discover a surprising result: a high incidence of “frontrunner” voting, which cannot be easily explained by existing research.

Much has been written about politicians' preferences for electoral systems, yet little is known about the preferences of voters. In 1993, New Zealand had a binding electoral referendum on the same day as the general election where voters chose between keeping a single plurality system (First Past the Post) or introducing a pure proportional one (Mixed Member Proportional). This paper merges data from all nationwide polling stations to Census data on local voters to examine what drives citizens' preferences for an electoral system. We find that strategic partisan interest was a key driver; voters overwhelmingly preferred the system that most benefited their favorite party. However, socioeconomic characteristics and social values also mattered; people who held more progressive values, were outside the dominant religion and lived in urban areas were much more likely to vote to change to a proportional system. Survey data show that these findings hold at the individual level and further that individuals who were angry with the economy were much more likely to vote against the status quo, regardless of their background, party preferences or social values. This behavior is likely to have ultimately balanced the result in favor of Mixed Member Proportional.

This paper proposes a theoretical framework to assess the presence of the swing voter's curse in proportional representation (PR) systems. Using individual survey data that contains detailed information on coalition expectations and preferences, this framework is then used to estimate its presence in five recent large elections. Swing voters are defined as those who believe that two or more coalitions are equally likely to be formed. A consistent asymmetric pattern emerges: voters who perceive a very close race between two coalitions are more likely to abstain when they cannot express a strict preference for any of the most likely coalitions. This result does not extend to voters who believe one coalition is much more likely to be formed than all other ones. Finally, this paper addresses the role of ambiguity aversion: results show that individuals who have a harder time assessing the probabilities of the different coalitions are more likely to abstain.