Calendrier du 13 décembre 2018
PEPES (Paris Empirical Political Economics) Working Group
Du 13/12/2018 de 12:30 à 14:00
salle R2-01 campus Jourdan - 48 bd Jourdan 75014 Paris
PONS Vincent (Harvard)
Rankings Matter Even When They Shouldn’t: Bandwagon Effect in Two Round Elections
écrit avec Clémence Tricaud
To predict others’ behavior and make their own choices, voters and candidates can rely on information provided by polls and past election results. We isolate the impact of candidates’ rankings using an RDD in French local and parliamentary two-round elections, where up to 3 or 4 candidates can qualify for the second round. Candidates who barely ranked first in the first round are more likely to run in the second round (5.6pp), win (5.8pp), and win conditionally on running (2.9 to 5.9pp), than those who barely ranked second. The effects are even larger for ranking second instead of third (23.5, 9.9, and 6.9 to 12.2pp), and ranking third instead of fourth also increases candidates’ second round outcomes (14.6, 2.2, and 3.0 to 5.0pp). These results are largest when the candidates have the same political orientation (making coordination relatively more important and desirable), but they remain strong when two candidates only qualify for the second round (and there is no need for coordination), suggesting that bandwagon effect is an important driver of voter behavior and election outcomes.
Travail et économie publique externe
Du 13/12/2018 de 12:30 à 13:45
BOUGUEN Adrien (Berkeley)
Heterogeneous Preschool Impact and Close Substitutes: Evidence from a Preschool Construction Program in Cambodia
écrit avec Co-author: Jan Berkes
We study the impact of preschools and the issue of close substitutes in a Cambodian
context where newly built formalized preschools are competing with
existing alternative early childcare arrangements. In addition to estimating
the reduced-form impact of a vast preschool construction program using a
random assignment, we implement several empirical techniques to isolate the
impact on children who would have stayed at home if they had not been enrolled
in the newly built preschools. We argue that this parameter is both
critical for the preschool literature and, because it does not depend on the
quality of alternative preschool, is often more externally valid than standard
treatment parameters. Our results show that after one year of experiment, the
average Intention-To-Treat impact on cognitive and socioemotional development
measures is significant but small in magnitude (0.05 SD). Our analysis,
however, suggests that the impact on the children who would have stayed at
home will likely be high and significant, between 0.13 SD and 0.45 SD. In a
context where infrastructures are improving in low-income countries, our analysis
suggests that accounting for close substitutes is crucial to produce more
external valid statements on programs’ performance and make appropriate
policy recommendations.
Texte intégral
Behavior seminar
Du 13/12/2018 de 11:00 à 12:00
salle R2-01, campus Jourdan - 48 bd Jourdan 75014 Paris
SUGDEN Robert (University of East Anglia UK)
Are violations of rational-choice theory errors that reasoning can correct? A re-examination of Savage’s response to the Allais Paradox
écrit avec Franz Dietrich and Antonios Staras
Decision theory, as used in economics, is based on axioms that are usually interpreted as principles of rationality. When decision theory is used to explain actual behaviour, the usual justification is that, in the situations to which the theory is applied, individuals can be expected to reason correctly. Thus, there is an implicit assumption that if an individual reasons correctly, his preferences will satisfy the rationality axioms. The same assumption often appears in behavioural economics, as the claim that observed deviations from standard decision theory are the result of ‘errors’ and that the satisfaction of individuals’ ‘true’ (i.e. error-free) preferences can be used as a normative criterion. But very little effort has been made to explain what correct reasoning is, or how it leads to the satisfaction of rationality axioms. A few writers have expressed scepticism about whether any process that might plausibly be called ‘correct reasoning’ can achieve this (e.g. Broome, Rationality through Reasoning, 2013; Cubitt and Sugden, Economics and Philosophy, 2014; Infante, Lecouteux and Sugden, Journal of Economic Methodology, 2016). Broome argues specifically that one cannot achieve rationality by ‘second-order’ reasoning from the premise that one’s preferences ought to satisfy rationality properties.
In this paper, I re-examine the famous case of Savage’s (1954) response to the Allais Paradox. Savage is the creator of the canonical axiomatisation of rational choice theory, and is explicit that his axioms are axioms of rationality, analogous with principles of logic. But when confronted with Allais’s decision problems, he discovered that his preferences contravened his own axioms. His response was to persuade himself that his original preferences were erroneous. I analyse the process of reasoning by which he reached this conclusion. I argue that Savage’s reasoning is first-order in Broome’s sense, and so not vulnerable to Broome’s objection, but that it draws on his own mental states in a way that goes beyond formally ‘correct’ reasoning. My conclusion is that Savage’s own position is coherent and defensible, but on the issue of whether rationality can be achieved by reasoning, the sceptics are right.