Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences California Institute of Technology Pasadena, California 91125 the Approximation of Efficient Public Good Mechanism by Simple Voting Schemes

Nber Working Paper Series Experimenting with Measurement Error: Techniques with Applications to the Caltech Cohort Study

Measurement error is ubiquitous in experimental work. It leads to imperfect statistical controls, attenuated estimated effects of elicited behaviors, and biased correlations between characteristics. We develop simple statistical techniques for dealing with experimental measurement error. These techniques are applied to data from the Caltech Cohort Study, which conducts repeated incentivized sur...

An Experimental Study of Jury Deliberation

We study the e¤ects of deliberation on collective decisions. In a series of experiments, we vary groups’preference distributions (between common and con‡icting interests) and the institutions by which decisions are reached (simple majority, two-thirds majority, and unanimity). When deliberation is prohibited, di¤erent institutions generate signi…cantly di¤erent outcomes, tracking the theoretica...

Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences California Institute of Technology Pasadena, California 91125 Learning Dynamics in Mechanism Design: an Experimental Comparison of Public Goods Mechanisms

In a repeated-interaction public goods economy, dynamic behavior may affect the efficiency of various mechanisms thought to be efficient in one-shot games. Inspired by results obtained in previous experiments, the current paper proposes a simple best response model in which players’ beliefs are functions of previous strategy profiles. The predictions of the model are found to be highly consiste...

Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences California Institute of Technology Pasadena, California 91125 on Incentives and Updating in Agent Based Models

Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences California Institute of Technology Pasadena, California 91125 Aggregation and Dynamics of Survey Responses: the Case of Presidential Approval

In this paper we critique much of the empirical literature on the important political science concept of presidential approval. Much of the recent research on presidential approval has focused on the dynamic nature of approval; arguments have raged about whether presidential approval is integrated, co-integrated, or fractionally integrated. We argue that none of these time-series concepts, impo...