Stephan Kroll

Crashing the Party: An Experimental Investigation of Strategic Voting in Primary Elections

The effect of primary formats on voting behavior and candidatefortune has been the topic of recent political, academic andlegal arguments. We address these debates by examining voterbehavior and election outcomes across primary systems in thelaboratory. While we find the rate of strategic voting isgenerally low, the rate varies across primary formats and thepotential impact on election outcomes differs fromconventional perceptions. Results suggest that more openprimary systems generate more strategic voting, but contraryto conventional wisdom, more open systems do not necessarilylead to more moderate election winners.

Endogenous Timing in a Gaming Tournament

This paper examines the theoretical background and actual behavior in a gaming tournament with endogenous timing where a person has more incentive, structure, and time to form a strategy. The baseline treatment suggests that subgame perfection is a reasonable predictor of behavior –- subjects made 170 of 208 theoretically predicted choices of best actions, with the majority of mistakes made in timing choices by the players who did not survive the cut to the second round. Four sensitivity treatments established that the design feature that lead to more predictable behavior was time to think –- 745 of 960 correctly predicted decisions with more time versus 595 of 960 with less time. A random effects Probit model suggests that the key design feature that closed the gap between predicted and observed behavior was not necessarily the non-linear payoffs created by the tournament design, but rather that the key was providing people with more time to think about their strategy.

Domestic politics and climate change: international public goods in two-level games

We use the theory of two-level games to explore how domestic constraints affect the outcome of bargaining games over national contributions to an international public good such as global climate change, and to discuss the implications for the Schelling conjecture. We model the international negotiations on two dimensions—domestic and foreign contributions to the international public good—and extend the basic two-level model by examining a nonzero sum, two-dimensional conflict model on level one that includes characteristics of both conflict and cooperation. Our main results suggest that if the domestic game is a ratification game (as in the presidential system of the US), then contributions do not exceed those in a benchmark game without domestic constraints. But if the domestic game is an election game (which is more important in the parliamentary system of most continental-European countries), contributions can actually be higher than the benchmark.

Social Capital and the Value of Hunting Club Memberships

When the state of New York purchased the Champion Lands in the Adirondack Park and subsequently terminated the leases of 48 hunting clubs on these lands, opponents of the purchase argued that: (1) a rich and unique culture was being destroyed; and (2) that the State failed to include the loss of this social capital in an economic impact analysis as specified by the State Environmental Quality and Review Act. In this study, responses to dichotomous choice contingent valuation (DC-CV) questions are used to estimate the value a member attaches to a hunting club membership. The willingness-to- pay (WTP) for a hunting club membership (beyond other hunting-related expenses) is estimated to be over

Sub-national Fiscal Activity as a Determinant of Individual Happiness: Ideology Matters

1,290, which corresponds to a total value of about

The prisoner’s dilemma as intergroup game: an experimental investigation

1.9 million for the 1,500 hunters in the 48 concerned clubs. These estimates should be included in a full benefit-cost analysis of the purchase, and provide useful input to the societal debate regarding future land purchases by states.

Evaluating the effect of conservation motivations on residential water demand

Though there has been a recent outpouring of studies on the determinants of individual happiness, there remains a paucity of research on the influence of specific sub-national government policies. Additionally, theoretical expectations about how fiscal variables influence happiness are unclear, making further empirical research imperative. Combining survey data and aggregate information about state and local government revenue and expenditures within the United States, we draw inferences about whether or not such activities affect individual happiness. We find no indication that the overall level of state or local fiscal activity affects life satisfaction. However, we offer evidence that personal happiness could be increased with an increase in the percentage of sub-national expenditure devoted to public safety. We also find that there are notable differences across ideological groups (conservatives, moderates, and liberals) with respect to how much public safety influences happiness, as well as how some other fiscal variables influence happiness. We conclude that ideology mediates the impact of fiscal variables on life satisfaction.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Experiments on Environmental and Natural Resource Policies

Laboratory and field experiments have grown significantly in prominence over the past decade. The experimental method provides randomization in key variables therefore permitting a deeper understanding of important economic phenomena. This path-breaking volume provides a valuable collection of experimental work within the area of environmental and resource economics and showcases how laboratory and field experiments can be used for both positive and normative purposes.

Avoiding an uncertain catastrophe: climate change mitigation under risk and wealth heterogeneity

Utilities and water suppliers in the southwestern United States have used education and conservation programs over the past two decades in an attempt to ameliorate the pressures of increasing water scarcity. This paper builds on a long history of water demand and environmental psychology literature and attempts to answer a simple question: do households primarily motivated by environmental and social (E&S) considerations consume water differently than households motivated primarily by cost and convenience (C&C)? We find that E&S consumers use less water than C&C consumers on average. We also find that there is no statistical difference between E&S and C&C consumers in their consumption responses to changing prices, temperature, and precipitation. This implies that targeting future conservation efforts to self-reported consumer groups may not improve policy effectiveness.

Political Economy of International Environmental Agreements

This special issue contains six articles that report on separate economics experiments related to environmental and natural resource policies.