Browsing by Author "Herzberg, Roberta"

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Costly Voting: Theoretical and Experimental Results on Commons Dilemmas in Spatial Committee Games
(1993) Wilson, Rick K.; Herzberg, Roberta; Elliott, Mark
"Our focus in this paper is with the transaction costs inherent in most decision making settings. We specifically investigate an "institution free" collective choice mechanism that includes costs to calling votes. A set of models show that under low costs (i.e., where no cost-induced equilibrium exists), actors have dominant strategies to continue to call votes. When those costs are collectively borne, a commons problem arises in which everyone is left worse off. A series of experimental manipulations are implemented to test various aspects of this model. These experiments use five-person committees with a forward moving agenda. Our results show that subject behavior is consistent with our theoretical predictions. We speculate about how differing institutional mechanism may be developed and retained precisely to offset these kinds of collective costs."
A Course of Study in Institutional Analysis and Development
(1991-1992) Ostrom, Vincent; Ostrom, Elinor; Herzberg, Roberta
"This seminar is an effort to build a multidisciplinary approach to institutional analysis an development that draws heavily upon work in anthropology, economics, law, political science, public administration, and sociology. The effort is to developa coherent theoretical approach that is consistent with work in public choice theory and the new institutional economics but focusing upon institutional analysis more generally. We proceed upon a presupposition that alternative institutional arrangements are available for those types of problems that are common to all human societies. Choice is possible; and choice of institutional arrangements is grounded in informed calculations that take account of both positive and normative considerations. The focus in institutional analysis is upon rule-ordered relationships and the way that these affect structures of incentives that facilitate or impede developmental opportunities. This seminar constitutes the theoretical core for the more general intellectual excange amoung scholars participating in the Workshop's program for advanced study in comparrative institutional analysis and development. The approach is intended to offer a mode of inquiry concerned with the nature and constitution of order in human societies."
Effects of Agenda Access Costs in Spatial Committee Setting
(1990) Herzberg, Roberta; Wilson, Rick K.
"In this paper we examine what decision making costs mean for outcomes in collective choice settings. Our specific focus is with simple majority rule spatial voting games. Wellknown findings for such games show that outcomes will cycle throughout the policy space given the frictionless nature of simple majority rule processes. Along with many others, we are uncomfortable with these theoretical results. Our discomfort stems from failing to observe such instability in natural empirical settings. Decision makers remind us that there are real costs to building agendas which are absent in our theoretical models. We use decision making costs as a way of introducing friction into the agenda process. Beginning from the same unconstrained spatial models, we introduce agenda access costs which we show are sufficient to induce equilibria in an otherwise unstable majority rule process."
Equilibrium Results in Committee Settings: Theory and Experiments on Decision Costs
(1987) Herzberg, Roberta; Wilson, Rick K.
"In this paper we formulate a cost-induced equilibrium concept. This equilibrium is generated from transaction costs connected with a sequential agenda process. Our claim is that most collective choice Institutions carry with them decision costs. If these transaction costs are very large, they are sufficient to produce stable collective choices. One of our findings illustrate that the size of these costs can be rather minimal and still produce a set of equilibrium outcomes. From a theoretical standpoint this leads us to conclude that cost-induced equilibrium are common in the empirical world. "We attempt to provide an empirical test of a cost-induced equilibrium using a laboratory experimental setting. Our results are disappointing. However, the experiments reported here are derived from pre-tests of a micro-computer network. At this point it is unclear whether the experimental design is producing independent effects or whether our results are valid. Given the variety of behavioral differences we observe, we doubt that the latter is the case. We suggest a number of additional experiments to more fully explore these results. In the meantime we are left with our puzzling empirical results and a call for further experimental research."
Laboratory Experiments as a Tool for Institutional Analysis and Design
(1994) Wilson, Rick K.; Herzberg, Roberta
"This paper offers our own response to Vincent Ostrom's call for a research program. We are keenly aware of the need for institutional analysis and for practical advice in natural settings. At the same time, we are quite concerned with making certain that we understand the theoretical foundations of the IAD framework. We feel that essential elements of that framework be subject to rigorous empirical test--tests that allow us to be certain about our causal claims. To accomplish these ends, we rely on a different methodology from most. Our focus is on formal models of institutions. Our analysis is primarily analytic, although we turn to laboratory experiments to provide empirical corroboration or refutation for those models. "We feel that laboratory experiments are similar in kind to the social experiments called for by Vincent Ostrom. In these experiments we are able to build (largely) self-contained systems ~ complete with their own cultures and institutions. By systematically changing institutional components we can develop a sense of how institutional variations affect individual behavior and in what ways. However, given that there is literally an infinity of institutional variations (even with relatively simple institutions), we rely on theoretical models to guide us to those institutional features which are most promising for study. We have chosen a particular methodology with which to probe the boundaries of the IAD framework and with which to generate corroborating findings."
Voting as a Public Bad: Theoretical and Experimental Results on Voting Costs
(1990) Herzberg, Roberta; Wilson, Rick K.
"Decision making in any collectivity is costly. When voting, members bear information costs for evaluation competing proposals, they bear opportunity costs for the time taken to conduct a ballot, and they bear the administrative costs for tabulating and registering the outcome. Although many of these costs seem trivial in small settings, in large part this is due to adopting particular institutions to minimize those costs. In largescale settings or where appropriate institutions are absent, the decision costs of voting can become quite high. Regarding voting as a costly activity becomes even more problematic when the collectivity operates under majority rule and an equilibrium outcome fails to exist. Under such a setting every majority has alternatives it prefers to the status quo. The general instability of majority rule processes can lead to an endless agenda cycle. While many scholars have concerned themselves with the problems of indeterminacy in majority rule decision processes few have considered a related problem -- the problem of high decision costs incurred as a result of taking large numbers of votes."