Median Voter Research Articles

Climate Policy and Moral Consumers*

AbstractThis paper analyzes climate policy (in the form of emissions caps) in a multi‐country game when consumers have preferences with different degrees of morality. In the absence of climate policy, the larger the consumers’ degree of morality, the lower the energy consumption and climate damage. Moral consumer‐voters elect either emissions caps (direct democracy) under majority rule, or policymakers who then choose emissions caps (representative democracy). If voters take prices as given, then election‐winning emissions caps are tighter, the lower the median voters’ degree of morality. If voters seek to influence prices in their favor, then strong strategic price effects are generated and the election‐winning emissions caps are less stringent, the lower the median voters’ degree of morality. We also show that the morality of election‐winning policymakers differs from the morality of median voters. It is possible that a moral median voter elects a policymaker with zero morality who then implements an emissions cap that might be larger than emissions in the absence of climate policy.

The flypaper sticks even when aid travels overseas

This paper extends the current literature by considering the existence of the flypaper effect internationally, with donor countries supplying foreign aid to recipient countries. The flypaper effect refers to the empirical anomaly associated with intergovernmental grants stimulating government expenditures more than can be explained by a pure income effect. The results reveal evidence of flypaper behavior such that for recipient countries one dollar of foreign aid raises public spending by $0.21-$0.42, whereas an equal increase in domestic income raises government expenditures by only $0.09-$0.16. Furthermore, we exploit variation in political institutions across countries and find that the flypaper effect is most pronounced in less democratic countries and find no flypaper effect in more democratic countries. This suggests that government officials are more likely to behave as expected by the median voter model when they are held accountable. Furthermore, countries with proportional, rather than majority/plurality, voting mechanisms do not display flypaper behavior.

Neutral respondents’ perceptions about geological disposal facilities

This paper quantitatively discusses the role of subjective assessment in deciding popular acceptance for a geological disposal facility (GDF) for high-level radioactive waste. The Hirose survey that we used is an online poll answered by 1,930 Japanese adults over the age of 20; it was conducted twice, both before and after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident, and enabled us to conduct a unique analysis. Using this balanced panel data, we focus on neutral respondents who answered Neither–Nor regarding their willingness to accept a GDF in their municipality. The analysis reached the following conclusions. First, neutral respondents were less likely to oppose GDFs, if it led to mitigating the stigma of GDF acceptance directed toward descendants and ancestors and instilling pride in the social benefits of GDF acceptance. Second, regarding the variability of GDF assessment between neutral and non-neutral respondents against external shock, neutrals tended to be more sensitive than non-neutrals. Furthermore, neutrals formed a large bracket wherein the median voter who was a decisive player in collective decision-making was likely to exist. Thus, we should reconsider the importance of neutral respondents for public decision-making about site selection of GDF.

Social discount rate: spaces for agreement

We study the problem of aggregating discounted utility preferences into a social discounted utility preference model. We use an axiom capturing a social responsibility of individuals’ attitudes to time, called consensus Pareto. We show that this axiom can provide consistent foundations for welfare judgments. Moreover, in conjunction with the standard axioms of anonymity and continuity, consensus Pareto can help adjudicate some fundamental issues related to the choice of the social discount rate: the society selects the rate through a generalized median voter scheme.

ПРИМЕНЕНИЕ МЕХАНИЗМОВ КОМПЛЕКСНОГО ОЦЕНИВАНИЯ И МАТРИЧНЫХ НЕАНОНИМНЫХ ОБОБЩЕННЫХ МЕДИАННЫХ МЕХАНИЗМОВ ДЛЯ СОГЛАСОВАНИЯ ИНТЕРЕСОВ АГЕНТОВ

The collective agent coordination problem in organizational behavior systems is consider. In particular, the problem of coordinating of the agents’ interests to assess the degree of achieve-ment of the corporate strategic targets. The relevance of the problem is due to the need to increase the speed of decision-making, the speed of reaction to changes in the external environment, which can be achieved using appropriate control mechanisms. Aim. Improving methods of collective deci-sion making under circumstances where agents have different ranks of significance. Materials and methods. Methods comprise the integrated rating mechanisms and the generalized median voter schemes. The mathematical apparatus was chosen is contingent on the group decision making in organizational systems. Active agents strives to maximize his target function in the process of inter-action, which leads to a conflict of interests and a desire to distort information. The chosen methods allow these problems to be solved. The first ones are used to aggregate indicators that reflect the de-gree of achievement of the private goals of the organization at the strategic level. The second ones are used to identification the true agents’ opinions about the type of target index convolution matri-ces. Results. The matrix non-anonymous generalized median mechanism is proposed. The non-anonymous statement allows taking into account the interests of agents with different ranks. It is shown how to reduce non-anonymous procedure to an anonymous one. Decisions making process about all elements of the convolution matrices in integrated rating mechanisms with using anony-mous median voter scheme is strategy proofnees. However, the results of aggregation are not stabil-ity to the agent strategic behavior in cases of application anonymous or non-anonymous coordina-tion procedures. The new integrated mechanism based on the synthesis of known control mecha-nisms is proposed to overcome the discovered problem. Conclusion. The statement of the problem corresponds to the real procedures of decision making by governance board, when the opinion of one agent turns out to be more significant than the opinion of another agent. The developed mech-anism makes it possible to agree on the opinions of experts on the degree of achievement of the strategic goals of the organization; it can also be adapted to solve other applied problems, for ex-ample, making a decision on the choice of a project, assessing risks, assessing suppliers, etc.

Estimating the locations of voters, politicians, policy outcomes, and status quos on a common scale

AbstractHow well are voters represented and what explains how well voters are represented? Answering these questions requires unpacking the mechanisms by which voters choose elected officials and elected officials implement policies. Though spatial theories of voting and legislative bargaining provide a broad framework for understanding these mechanisms, testing these theories involves a measurement problem where multiple political actors and outcomes must be located. We develop a technique for estimating policy outcomes, status quo locations, the ideology of elite political actors, and the ideology of voters, on a common scale. Using our new estimates, we demonstrate a similar level of incongruence for tax policies and spending policies. The incongruence arises for different reasons however—tax policies are over-responsive to the position of the median voter. Contrarily, spending policies are under-responsive and barely correlated with the position of the median voter. In examining the underlying mechanisms for policy change, we find that while the positions of elected officials over-respond to the median voter, the changing composition of state government has little immediate impact on policy. Instead, policy outcomes respond to long-term trends in the composition of government.

Voice and Balancing in US Congressional Elections

If the median voter wrote the Constitution, every Tuesday would be Election Day. Consider the case of the United States: Halfway into a presidential term, congressional elections allow the people to adjust the course of federal policy. Two complementary mechanisms describe how this opportunity is embraced by centrists: a direct mechanism, which strengthens the out-party in Congress to “balance” the president’s policy impact, and an indirect mechanism, by which midterm voting serves to “voice” dissatisfaction as a signal to the president. A model of repeated elections unites the two mechanisms: whereas midterm balancing reacts to the preceding presidential election, midterm voice anticipates the following one. Using micro and macro data for all House elections from 1956 through 2018, I show that balancing and voice work hand in hand: it is those voters with both policy incentives who contribute most to the notorious “midterm loss,” and particularly so under circumstances that make balancing more necessary and voice more promising. Yet although policy-oriented behavior typically restrains dominant parties, it may also cushion the fall of unpopular administrations. Centrists can be creative.

Models Explaining the Levels of Forest Environmental Taxes and Other PES Schemes in Japan

Between 2003 and April 2016, 37 of 47 prefectures (i.e., sub-national local governmental units) introduced forest environmental taxes—local payment for environmental services (PES) schemes. These introductions are unique historical natural experiments, in which local governments made their own political decisions considering multiple factors. This study empirically evaluates models that explain normalized expenditures from forest environmental taxes as well as other PES schemes (subsidies for enhancing forests’ and mountain villages’ multifunction, and green donation) and traditional forestry budgets for Japan’s 47 prefectures based on the median voter model. Results demonstrate that the median voter model can particularly explain forest environmental taxes and forestry budgets. Specifically, the past incidence of droughts and landslides is positively correlated with the levels of forest environmental taxes. The higher the number of municipalities in a prefecture, the lower the amount of forest environmental tax spent on forests. Moreover, the number of forest volunteering groups, possibly an indicator of social capital in the forest sectors, had strong positive correlations with the levels of forest environmental taxes and forestry budgets. Other PES schemes and forestry budgets had unique patterns of correlations with the examined factors.

Convergence and divergence in dynamic voting with inequality

We test whether the original median voter theorem’s result of political convergence in a two-party system holds when the control variables that influence voters’ preferences endogenously evolve over time and parties are policy motivated. We present a dynamic voting model in which voters’ heterogeneous preferences evolve over time depending on observable common factors and unobservable idiosyncratic characteristics. In such a setting, the convergence of parties’ platforms to the centre is a special case within a range of results that include instability and extreme equilibria. In particular, convergence is achieved not as the result of electoral strategies, but when neither party has enough support to pursue its agenda.

Strategic Welfare Policies with Migration: A Theoretical Model and Empirical Evidence

Abstract We test the welfare magnet hypothesis for Europe. We modify the existing theoretical frameworks assuming that: (a) welfare services, intended as the output of welfare expenditure, not the poor’s income or social expenditure, enter the median voter’s utility function; (b) preferences depend on the position of the median voter in the income distribution; and (c) the total amount of welfare services provided may differ from the amount needed to finance them, because of inefficiencies in the transfer process. We then test the welfare magnet hypothesis for 22 European countries by estimating a reaction function corresponding to the generic form adopted by the literature, but using the variables inspired by the model. We find evidence of a positive strategic interaction among countries, which suggests a downward bias in the choice of the protection level because of welfare competition. The level of social protection also positively depends on GDP, the redistributive attitudes of residents and their weight in the population, vis-à-vis the migrants’ share, and the efficiency of social expenditure.

Electoral Democracy – 2020 in the Light of Public Choice Theory: Lessons in Institutional Design for Russia

2020 was marked by major landmark events. First of all, there is the political crisis in the United States related to the presidential elections. Secondly, there is the UK’s secession from the EU. Finally, there is the unexpected return to power of left-wing forces in some Latin American countries. This forces us to return to the foundations and conclusions of the theory of public choice – a tool that allowed us to analyze and predict the political and economic behavior of modern electoral democracies.The paper states that the erosion of the middle class leads to the dominance of minorities and their priorities. The position of the median voter is losing its former significance. As a result, the political duopoly becomes unstable, in contrast to the model of political pluralism (oligopoly). The desire of middle-income countries with a high degree of social differentiation to adopt a bipartisan system in the hope that this will ensure political stability must be mistaken. In contrary to what was said, the construct of American federalism, which many scholars consider archaic, effectively defends horizontal democracy and discourages the imposition of values by aggressive minority coalitions. The use of one or another modification of the «electoral colleges» in the presidential and parliamentary elections would strengthen the federal principles of horizontal democracy in Russia. The article presents an analysis of two main approaches to the analysis of corruption – as «opportunistic behavior of an agent in the principal-agent model», and as «status rent». Criticism of the latter approach reveals the view of Russia as an «institutional mutant». Authors who interpret corruption as «status rent» tend to ignore the rent-seeking behavior of actors in rich countries. The article substantiates the idea of transferring to Russia the American legislation regulating the behavior of lobbyists, the contribution of funds to the electoral funds of parties and politicians. Such a transplant will dramatically reduce the volume of domestic corruption, while at the same time making the «electoral machines» much more transparent.

Men, women and unions

AbstractThe paper examines whether workplace gender dynamics contributed to the decline of unions. To this end, it reviews relevant literature and proposes three hypotheses, which it then tests using alternative empirical analyses and data from Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS) and British Social Attitudes Survey (BSAS). The results from employee‐level analysis reveal that, compared with women, (i) men were significantly less likely to have never been union members and (ii) they were also significantly more likely to have been union members in the past. In addition, workplace‐level analysis using WERS reveals that there is an inverse link between union membership and the share of women in workplaces, which is also found to have a non‐linear form. The paper ponders if unions may need to encompass broader agenda than those informed by the median voter to improve their fate.

A supply-demand model of public sector size

We develop a supply-demand model for the public sector with a political equilibrium. The model considers the inefficiencies caused by taxes and includes costs associated with the provision of public goods to consumers. We show that the size of the public sector may depend on the median voter's income, population size, costs associated with paying tax, and quality of institutions, all of which reflect the costs of provisioning public goods. The estimates for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries are compatible with theoretical predictions; however, they do not confirm Wagner's law, which holds that the public sector share does not grow with an increase in income. A greater dependency ratio and the Gini coefficient increase demand for redistribution policies. Greater government effectiveness is a supply-side factor that increases the public sector's share in an economy.

Why do local governments produce redistributive urban policies?

ABSTRACT Why do local governments produce redistributive urban policies, particularly in cities of the Global South? Present debates oscillate between highlighting these cities’ governmental problems or sustaining the enabling role of institutionalized social participation. From the standpoint of São Paulo, Brazil, this article shows a different picture. The trajectories of 27 redistributive urban programs follow a conflictive and incremental expansion and diversification of redistributive policies through time. Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) techniques indicate that program creation usually happened in left-wing administrations. Most of them were maintained after government swings, although at lower pace, due mainly to the pressure of political competition, but also on account of multi-level politics and policy routinization. Even previously discontinued programs tended to reemerge later, due to the embeddedness of civil society actors in policy communities and multi-level politics. Therefore, trajectories were explained by a combination of partisan politics and median voter mechanisms with policy production processes and actors.

Inequality and the Partisan Political Economy

ABSTRACT Inequality is shown to shape public policies with significant redistributive ramifications. As a measure of the poor median voter's dissatisfaction with the economic status quo, some scholars argue that it is an indicator of redistributive pressure. Yet for others, it is a proxy for the power asymmetry between the rich and the poor in policymaking. How does inequality affect redistributive tax policies? We offer an explanation based on policymaker ideology. We show that when inequality rises, left-leaning policymakers craft more redistributive policies while right-leaning policymakers suppress them. Using the top income shares for inequality, we analyse two datasets to corroborate our argument: (1) cross-national inheritance and income tax data; and (2) U.S. Senate votes on redistributive tax bills.

Demography and provisions for retirement: the pension composition, a behavioral approach

AbstractPensions may be provided for in a modern society by a mix of several methods, namely by voluntary individual savings, mandatory fully-funded occupational pension systems, mandatory social security financed by pay-as-you-go, and old-fashioned hoarding in cash. We call a specific mixture of the four systems a pension composition. We assume that individual workers decide on their own individual savings, that the fully-funded occupational system is decided upon by the age cohort of the median worker, and that social security is decided upon by the median voter. We assume that individual and collective pension savings are the only sources of capital supply. When capital supply equals demand from industry, there is equilibrium in the capital market with a corresponding equilibrium interest rate and pension composition. In this paper, we assume a demography with one hundred age brackets and we investigate how changes in the birth rates, survival rates, and the retirement age affect the pension composition and the capital market equilibrium. Our conclusion is that for a given technology, the pension composition and the interest rate are determined by the demography and cannot be modified at will as a long-term political instrument.

DP 0255 - ‘Robin Hood in Reverse’: persistence and barriers to redistributive fiscal policy

Despite improvements in the living conditions of the population, there has not been a significant change in income disparities. Since the growth of left-wing parties and political competition as per the median voter hypothesis do not stand in the Brazilian case, what could explain the tenacity of inequality in the country? To answer this, the paper, grounded in new institutionalism theory, employed a process-tracing method to explore the causes of the continuity of unequal income distribution in Brazil. The inquiry tests the mechanism using the case of redistributive fiscal policy and the literature of electoral rules and business influence in the political system. This analysis reinforces that the Brazilian government not only misuses its fiscal instruments to distribute income, but also acts as a ‘Robin Hood in reverse’: that is, it withdraws from those who have less to subsidize or pay transfers to those who have more.

Income inequality and economic growth: A re‐examination of theory and evidence

AbstractWe re‐examine the theoretical and empirical relationship between income inequality and long‐run economic growth in an endogenous growth model with a flat tax on income, distributive conflicts among agents, and median voter dynamics. We show that when government spends tax revenue on the provision of public goods in the form of both production and consumption services, the theoretical relationship between inequality and economic growth is neither strictly positive nor strictly negative, but ambiguous. An empirical evaluation of the theoretical findings is carried out by applying a semi‐parametric model on a sample of 63 countries for the period 1991–2017. Results show that the relationship between income inequality and growth takes the form of an inverted U‐shape in that income inequality initially has a positive impact on growth up to an average Gini coefficient threshold of 35.92, beyond which it negatively impacts on growth.

Lobbying and policy extremism in repeated elections

We study a model of repeated elections that features privately informed politicians and ideologically extreme lobby groups. We establish existence of a class of perfect Bayesian equilibria. If office incentives are high, then all equilibria feature strong parties: liberal politicians all choose the same policy, as do all conservative politicians. When the effectiveness of money approaches zero, these equilibrium policies converge to the median, providing a dynamic version of the median voter theorem. When the effectiveness of money becomes large, however, the most polarized strongly partisan equilibria become arbitrarily extremist, and thus highly effective lobbying creates the possibility of arbitrarily extreme policy outcomes. In case the effectiveness of money is not large, lobbying incentives can push politicians to choose more moderate policies than they otherwise would, and an increase in the effectiveness of money can increase the welfare of the median voter.

Illustrating Swing Votes II: United States Supreme Court

We offer a graphical display of the swing votes between all actual and possible tight majorities of the United States Supreme Court from 1946 to 2016. We observe and ebb and flow of the number of 5–4 coalitions and swing votes. We also note various inconsistencies with the median voter theorem and incompatibilities with locational models of adjudication.