IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/soecon/v65y1999i3p622-629.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Agendas and Strategic Voting

Author

Listed:
  • Charles A. Holt
  • Lisa R. Anderson

Abstract

This paper describes a simple classroom experiment in which students decide which projects to fund on the basis of majority voting. Several agendas are used to generate a voting cycle and an inefficiently high level of public spending. Classroom discussion allows students to discover for themselves how to manipulate outcomes through agenda design and strategic voting. The exercise leads naturally to a discussion of political institutions and the size of government. Use: This experiment can be used in introductory and public economics classes to teach concepts of voting cycles and inefficiencies in public choice. Time required: Twenty minutes for reading instructions and taking votes and 15 minutes for discussion. Materials: A printout of the instructions for each participant and one deck of ordinary playing cards for each group of seven voters.

Suggested Citation

  • Charles A. Holt & Lisa R. Anderson, 1999. "Agendas and Strategic Voting," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 65(3), pages 622-629, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:65:y:1999:i:3:p:622-629
    DOI: 10.1002/j.2325-8012.1999.tb00182.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2325-8012.1999.tb00182.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/j.2325-8012.1999.tb00182.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Plott, Charles R & Levine, Michael E, 1978. "A Model of Agenda Influence on Committee Decisions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 68(1), pages 146-160, March.
    2. Fiorina, Morris P. & Plott, Charles R., 1978. "Committee Decisions under Majority Rule: An Experimental Study," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 72(2), pages 575-598, June.
    3. Charles A. Holt, 1996. "Classroom Games: Trading in a Pit Market," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 193-203, Winter.
    4. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 1997. "Classroom Games: Voluntary Provision of a Public Good," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(4), pages 209-215, Fall.
    5. Eckel, Catherine & Holt, Charles A, 1989. "Strategic Voting in Agenda-Controlled Committee Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 763-773, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Antoinette Baujard & Herrade Igersheim, 2007. "Expérimentation du vote par note et du vote par approbation lors de l'élection présidentielle française du 22 avril 2007," Working Papers halshs-00337290, HAL.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anna Bassi, 2015. "Voting systems and strategic manipulation: An experimental study," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 27(1), pages 58-85, January.
    2. Meszerics, Tamás, 1997. "Stratégiai viselkedés és bizottsági döntés [Strategic behaviour and committee decison]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(7), pages 687-697.
    3. Oleg Smirnov, 2009. "Endogenous choice of amendment agendas: types of voters and experimental evidence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 141(3), pages 277-290, December.
    4. Ehrhart, Karl-Martin & Gardner, Roy & von Hagen, Jurgen & Keser, Claudia, 2007. "Budget processes: Theory and experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 279-295, May.
    5. Kenneth Koford, 1982. "Centralized vote-trading," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 39(2), pages 245-268, January.
    6. Elizabeth Hoffman & Charles Plott, 1983. "Pre-meeting discussions and the possibility of coalition-breaking procedures in majority rule committees," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 21-39, January.
    7. Karine Van der Straeten & Jean-François Laslier & Nicolas Sauger & André Blais, 2010. "Strategic, sincere, and heuristic voting under four election rules: an experimental study," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 35(3), pages 435-472, September.
    8. Apesteguia, Jose & Ballester, Miguel A. & Masatlioglu, Yusufcan, 2014. "A foundation for strategic agenda voting," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 91-99.
    9. de Bartolome, Charles A. M., 1995. "Which tax rate do people use: Average or marginal?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 79-96, January.
    10. William E. Becker, 2007. "Quit Lying and Address the Controversies: There are No Dogmata, Laws, Rules or Standards in the Science of Economics," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 51(1), pages 3-14, March.
    11. Ganna Pogrebna & Pavlo Blavatskyy, 2009. "Coordination, focal points and voting in strategic situations: a natural experiment," IEW - Working Papers 403, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    12. Daniel Zizzo, 2010. "Experimenter demand effects in economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(1), pages 75-98, March.
    13. Jonathan Guest, 2015. "Reflections on ten years of using economics games and experiments in teaching," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(1), pages 1115619-111, December.
    14. Charles A. Holt, 2003. "Economic Science: An Experimental Approach for Teaching and Research," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 69(4), pages 754-771, April.
    15. Charles Plott, 2014. "Public choice and the development of modern laboratory experimental methods in economics and political science," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 25(4), pages 331-353, December.
    16. Kenneth Koford, 1982. "Why so much stability? An optimistic view of the possibility of rational legislative decisionmaking," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 38(1), pages 3-19, March.
    17. Ortmann, Andreas, 2003. "Charles R. Plott's collected papers on the experimental foundations of economic and political science," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 555-575, August.
    18. Morgan, Stephen N. & Sharp, Misti D. & Grogan, Kelly A., 2020. "So You Want to Run a Classroom Experiment Online? The Good, the Bad, and the Different," Applied Economics Teaching Resources (AETR), Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 2(5), December.
    19. repec:aje:articl:v:1:y:2004:i:1:p:5-17 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Elizabeth Hoffman & Edward W. Packel, 1979. "A Theoretical Approach to the Decision to Stop Deliberating Over Legislative Alternatives," Discussion Papers 386, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    21. Ruffle, Bradley J., 2005. "Tax and subsidy incidence equivalence theories: experimental evidence from competitive markets," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(8), pages 1519-1542, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:65:y:1999:i:3:p:622-629. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)2325-8012 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.