Состоялось очередное заседание научного семинара "Политическая экономика"

Докладчик: Ozgur Evren (New Economic School)
Тема доклада: Voter Participation

Аннотация:             

The classical, rational voter model posits that the expected (gross) payoff associated with the act of voting equals the utility of changing the winner multiplied by the probability of being decisive (pivotal). In a seminal paper, Palfrey and Rosenthal (APSR, 1985) have shown in a game-theoretic set-up that pivot probabilities in equilibrium are typically small in a large election, leading to an absurd conclusion known as the "paradox of not voting": Citizens must abstain unless they attach an intrinsic value to the act of voting. While earlier studies suggest that voting may indeed be intrinsically valuable, this approach is short of explaining various strategic phenomena. Consequently, recently there has been a surge of interest in alternative models that replace the standard calculus of voting with a welfare maximization problem. In this talk, I focus on two recent approaches, leaving aside a paper of mine. The first approach is a straightforward generalization of the classical model that replaces selfish agents with altruistic ones. The second approach is based on the notion of rule-utilitarianism and requires a group based equilibrium notion instead of Nash equilibrium. I raise various open questions within both approaches. I argue that these seemingly distinct approaches may actually be very close to each other. In particular, the open questions within each approach may be solved by utilizing the findings of the other. My paper, which I discuss in the second talk, builds upon these observations.

 

Рабочий язык - английский.