The Social Welfare Functions of Elected Politicians - Follow-up Survey and Experiment

Last registered on January 03, 2025

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
The Social Welfare Functions of Elected Politicians - Follow-up Survey and Experiment
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0015070
Initial registration date
December 20, 2024

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
January 03, 2025, 7:51 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
University of Mannheim

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
U. Zurich
PI Affiliation
U. Leipzig
PI Affiliation
RU. Bochum
PI Affiliation
U. Cologne/MPI

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2024-12-20
End date
2025-01-31
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
We conduct a follow-up survey to a study that is published as a working paper and that was also pre-registered. The initial working paper version and pre-registration are available as CESifo Working Paper No. 10329 (https://www.cesifo.org/en/publications/2023/working-paper/politicians-social-welfare-criteria-experiment-german-legislators-0) and AEARCTR-0007689 (https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/7689). The Abstract of the initial working paper describes the content of this follow up study and reads as follows:

Much economic analysis derives policy recommendations based on social welfare criteria intended to model the preferences of a policy maker. Yet, little is known about policy maker’s normative views in a way amenable to this use. In a behavioral experiment, we elicit German legislators’ social welfare criteria unconfounded by political economy constraints. When resolving preference conflicts across individuals, politicians place substantially more importance on least-favored than on most-favored alternatives, contrasting with both common aggregation mechanisms and the equal weighting inherent in utilitarianism and the Kaldor-Hicks criterion. When resolving preference conflicts within individuals, we find no support for the commonly used “long-run criterion” which insists that choices merit intervention only if the lure of immediacy may bias intertemporal choice. Politicians’ and the public’s social welfare criteria largely coincide.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Ambuehl, Sandro et al. 2025. "The Social Welfare Functions of Elected Politicians - Follow-up Survey and Experiment." AEA RCT Registry. January 03. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.15070-1.0
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention (Hidden)
The survey/experiment is very similar to that described in our initial working paper. It is similar to Survey Version "Public 1", but with a different type of sample. "Normal"/lay people that are similar to the German population and not, as in "Public 1" of the initial working paper, similar to the sample of elected politicians in Survey Version "Politicians". See the survey description in Sections 2 and 3 and Table 3 in CESifo Working Paper No. 10329 . Survey participants thus aggregate individual preferences and have the opportunity to restrict others' choice sets. We implement a few differences to the initial survey to test the initial survey's robustness. The most important differences are: 1) Randomizing the order of the survey part in which participants aggregate individual preferences and the survey part in which participants can restrict others' choice sets. 2) New questions to learn if survey participants associate a certain charity with the anonymous letters (A, B, C) used in the aggregation decisions. 3) Randomizing the order in which the charities are displayed at the beginning of the aggregation part to learn if this order affects aggregation decisions.
Intervention Start Date
2024-12-23
Intervention End Date
2025-01-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Same as in the original working paper version:
-- Aggregation decisions
-- Choice Set Restrictions (i.e., Paternalistic interventions)
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We study preference-aggregation and paternalistic-intervention decisions in a sample of "normal"/lay people.
Experimental Design Details
The survey/experiment is very similar to that described in our initial working paper. It is similar to Survey Version "Public 1", but with a different type of sample. "Normal"/lay people that are similar to the German population and not, as in "Public 1" of the initial working paper, similar to the sample of elected politicians in Survey Version "Politicians". See the survey description in Sections 2 and 3 and Table 3 in CESifo Working Paper No. 10329 . Survey participants thus aggregate individual preferences and have the opportunity to restrict others' choice sets. We implement a few differences to the initial survey to test the initial survey's robustness. The most important differences are:

1) Randomizing the order of the survey part in which participants aggregate individual preferences and the survey part in which participants can restrict others' choice sets (i.e., either aggregation followed by choice-set-restriction or choice-set-restriction followed by aggregation).
2) New questions to learn if survey participants associate a certain charity with the anonymous letters (A, B, C) used in the aggregation decisions.
3) Randomizing the order in which the charities are displayed at the beginning of the aggregation part to learn if this order affects aggregation decisions.

Planned analyses:

With regards to 1): we analyze if aggregation and choice-set-restriction decisions decisions depend on the order of the two survey parts.

With regards to 2): We i) elicit which charity (non-anonymized) people prefer (through an incentivized donation question). They can also indicate that they have no preference for a given charity. We then ii) ask about the belief which of the letters used in the aggregation decision (A, B, C) stands for the charity that they indicated to prefer in the previous question i). In our analyis, we then relate the aggregation decisions made before to the letter that was indicated in question ii). For example, we regress a dummy indicating whether an aggregation decision is in favor of A on a dummy indicating if A was chosen in question ii). The latter dummy shall be zero for those subjects that indicated B or C in question ii) or that indicated in question i) that they do not prefer a specific charity.

With regards to 3): we analyze if aggregation decisions differ across different orderings with which the charities are displayed.
Randomization Method
randomization done by a computer
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
1000
Sample size: planned number of observations
1000
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
500/500 for the randomized ordering of the two survey parts

333/333/333 for the randomized ordering of displayed charities within the aggregation survey part.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Ethics Committee University of Cologne
IRB Approval Date
2020-10-12
IRB Approval Number
200026CF

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials