Yoichi Hizen

Designing GHG emissions trading institutions in the Kyoto protocol: an experimental approach

We re-evaluate two experiments by Hizen and Saijo (1999a,b) to examine the performance of bilateral trading and double auction institutiions in GHG emissions trading.

The Effect of Dual Candidacy on Voting Decisions

This paper conducts a decision theoretic analysis of the effect of dual candidacy on voting decision in the Japanese variant of the mixed electoral system, where each candidate can run in both a single-member district (SMD) and a proportional representation (PR) block, and dual candidates can be ranked either individually or equally in parties’ PR lists: their post-election ranking is determined by their SMD votes. The model shows that if an SMD candidate also runs in the PR block, it creates a negative effect on voters’ utility increment obtained from casting their SMD votes for him. If he is ranked equally in the PR list, however, it additionally creates a possibility that SMD votes for him help him win a PR seat against other equally-ranked dual candidates. This additional effect enables dual candidacy accompanied by equal ranking to attract SMD votes, although its ability is limited.

Preemptive striking in individual and group conflict

In this study, we conducted a laboratory experiment to assess preemptive striking by and towards individuals or groups. In the framework of a preemptive strike game, we set the following four conditions: one person faced another person, one person faced a three-person group, a three-person group faced an individual, and a three-person group faced another three-person group. Previous studies have revealed that greed is activated when participants belong to a group, while fear is activated when participants interact with a group, and further, that attacking behaviors in the preemptive strike game are driven by fear. These observations led to a hypothesis that high attack rates would be realized when participants interact with a group, regardless of whether the participants make decisions as individuals or a group. The results of our experiment, however, rejected this hypothesis. Among the four conditions, the attack rate was highest when a three-person group faced an individual. As possible reasons for our observation, we discuss the potential threat stemming from the imbalance in the effectiveness of attack between individuals and groups, and the (incorrect) belief by groups that single individuals would be more likely to attack out of fear.