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Field
Abstract
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Before
We study fiscal accountability in a laboratory election environment in which candidates compete over a full fiscal platform consisting of a budget and its allocation between a public good and private rents. The theory predicts that more disproportional power-sharing rules raise the electoral stakes of winning and therefore discipline rent extraction. The experiment is designed to test five hypotheses. First, greater power-sharing disproportionality should reduce corruption, increase public-good provision, and improve aggregate voter welfare. Second, if voters behave fully rationally, human voters should not differ from automated utility-maximizing voters. Third, explicit disclosure of rents should not matter when voters can infer rents from the budget constraint. Fourth, greater disproportionality should weaken the rent-increasing effect of stronger partisanship. Fifth, away from equilibrium, a candidate may sustain higher rents by bundling them with higher public-good provision when the benchmark platform provides too little of the public good relative to the socially efficient benchmark. We implement seven laboratory treatments at Tianjin University with 346 student subjects. Main outcomes are candidate policy choices, vote choice and vote share, and aggregate voter welfare.
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After
We study fiscal accountability in a laboratory election environment in which candidates compete over a full fiscal platform consisting of a budget and its allocation between a public good and private rents. The theory predicts that more disproportional power-sharing rules raise the electoral stakes of winning and therefore discipline rent extraction. The experiment is designed to test five hypotheses. First, greater power-sharing disproportionality should reduce corruption, increase public-good provision, and improve aggregate voter welfare. Second, if voters behave fully rationally, human voters should not differ from automated utility-maximizing voters. Third, explicit disclosure of rents should not matter when voters can infer rents from the budget constraint. Fourth, greater disproportionality should weaken the rent-increasing effect of stronger partisanship. Fifth, away from equilibrium, a candidate may sustain higher rents by bundling them with higher public-good provision when the benchmark platform provides too little of the public good relative to the socially efficient benchmark. We implement seven laboratory treatments at Tianjin University with 376 student subjects. Main outcomes are candidate policy choices, vote choice and vote share, and aggregate voter welfare.
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Last Published
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Before
April 15, 2026 09:36 AM
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After
April 22, 2026 06:16 AM
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Planned Number of Clusters
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Before
56 groups
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After
72 groups
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Planned Number of Observations
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Before
1200 observations at the candidate's level, and 6250 observations at the voter level.
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After
1200 observations at the candidate's level, and 7000 observations at the voter level.
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Field
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
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Before
Each treatment has at least two sessions with 56 subjects (16 candidates and 40 voters) and 25 rounds. Therefore, the minimum sample size is (8*25*6=)1200 (winners of the elections) for the candidate analysis and (20*25*10+25*25*2=)6250 for the voting analysis.
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After
Each treatment has at least two sessions with 56 subjects (16 candidates and 40 voters) and 25 rounds, with the only exception that T7 has four sessions. Therefore, the minimum sample size is (8*25*6=)1200 (winners of the elections) for the candidate analysis and (20*25*10+20*25*4=)7000 for the voting analysis.
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