Re: lotteries and elections
On Tue, Aug 31, 2004 at 08:25:16PM -0500, Jeffrey Rous wrote: When people ask me why I vote, my standard answer is because I can. Voting simply reminds me that we have something special going here in the free world. I do a decent job of learning about the candidates and issues not because I think my single vote matters, but because, overall, voting does matter and I get a kick out of being part of the process. Maybe you know that your vote doesn't matter and still vote anyway, but I bet there is a high positive correlation among the general population between the belief that one's vote matters, and willingness to vote. Using ourselves for anecdotes in this case is a bad idea. We as a self-selected group of armchair economists already know that the probability that one's vote will make a difference in the outcome is tiny, so of course anybody who still votes will be voting for other reasons.
Re: lotteries and elections
On Tue, Aug 31, 2004 at 07:50:08PM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've been discussing with my undergradute students the rationality of voting. What about the possibility that many people do not deal well with with small probabilities, and mistakenly think that their votes matter? Why have economists latched onto the idea of expressive voting, when a much simpler explanation is that most apparently irrational voting really is irrational? Of course expressive voting preserves the assumption of rationality, but there is still the problem of participation in lotteries with negative expected payoffs. Is that just to be ignored, or will someone come up with a theory of expressive lottery ticket purchase?
Re: lotteries and elections
Wei Dai wrote: On Tue, Aug 31, 2004 at 08:25:16PM -0500, Jeffrey Rous wrote: When people ask me why I vote, my standard answer is because I can. Voting simply reminds me that we have something special going here in the free world. I do a decent job of learning about the candidates and issues not because I think my single vote matters, but because, overall, voting does matter and I get a kick out of being part of the process. Maybe you know that your vote doesn't matter and still vote anyway, but I bet there is a high positive correlation among the general population between the belief that one's vote matters, and willingness to vote. Using ourselves for anecdotes in this case is a bad idea. We as a self-selected group of armchair economists already know that the probability that one's vote will make a difference in the outcome is tiny, so of course anybody who still votes will be voting for other reasons. It seems to be taken as a given that the cost/benifit analysis of voting seems to be placed firmly on the side of not-voting. Does anybody have any data to back that up? It seems to me that even though the chance that your vote would matter is rather small, the effect it can have if it does matter is very, very large. An interesting thing I've heard about from the Australian elections is that the entire fate of the country depends on as little as 20,000 people. Most electorates are safe and your vote doesn't matter either way, in swing states, most voters are already decided so those 20,000 people have a huge effect on the election outcomes. Xianhang Zhang
Re: lotteries and elections
I don't have an answer for you, but it seems important to point out that not all lotteries have a negative expected payoff. Large, multi-state jackpots are often a fair bet, even after taxes. The best economic analyses I've seen are Charles T. Clotfelter and Philip J. Cook, Selling Hope: State Lotteries In America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), and Clotfelter, Charles T., and Philip J. Cook. 1990. On the Economics of State Lotteries. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 4(4): 105-119. These are mostly concerned with the taxation aspect, but you might find something useful there. Dimitriy V. Masterov
Re: lotteries and elections
On Tue, 31 Aug 2004, Dimitriy V. Masterov wrote: I don't have an answer for you, but it seems important to point out that not all lotteries have a negative expected payoff. Large, multi-state jackpots are often a fair bet, even after taxes. How does that come about? Cheers, M. Christopher Auld[EMAIL PROTECTED] Assistant Professorhttp://jerry.ss.ucalgary.ca Department of Economicsvoice: 1.403.220.4098 University of Calgary FAX: 1.403.282.5262
Re: lotteries and elections
Dimitriy V. Masterov writes: If my memory serves me, when no one has a winning ticket, the pot gets rolled over to the next round. When you have several large states that run a joint lottery, the sum can get really enormous when this happens, so that the expected gain is positive even with a minuscule probability of winning. Right. Economic intuition will predict that when this happens, lots of people will rush to buy tickets, Right. so that the the probability of winning will fall, eliminating any gains. However, this does not always seem to be the case in real life. Not quite right, but sort of. With these games, the player picks numbers, the lottery picks numbers, and the player wins if his/her numbers match the lotteries. The probability of a given ticket winning does NOT depend on the number of tickets purchased -- after all, how else could you have a round when no one has a winning ticket? The size of the pot in the NEXT round (if no one wins) might depend on the number of tickets sold in this round, depending on the lottery rules, but that doesn't affect the expected gain on THIS round. The only thing that does impact the expected gain on this round is the fact that more people buying tickets means there's a greater chance someone else picks the wining numbers also. Since the pot is split among all players who pick the winning numbers, this affects the expected gain, but not the probability of a win. --Robert
Re: lotteries and elections
I've been discussing with my undergradute students the rationality of voting. People might get other benefits from voting besides thinking that their one vote can influence the outcome. Some people feel a civic pride in voting. Others vote to prevent others from telling them they don't have a right to complain, a comment complaint lobbed at people who don't vote. I like the excitement of going to the polls and seeing everyone else all keyed up about the election. Some people pick a candidate and then cheer for him or her, and then feel good about that candidate winning the election the way they would a race horse or a sports team. For some people voting might serve as a social outlet--something to do around other people instead of just staying home. What other reasons might people vote besides believing they can influence the outcome? David Levenstam In a message dated 8/31/04 12:31:37 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Does anyone know if there is a correlation between a person's willingness to buy lottery tickets, and his willingness to vote in large elections (where the chances of any vote being pivotal is tiny)? A simple explanation for both of these phenomena, where people choose to do things with apparently negative expected payoff, is misunderstanding or miscalculation of probabilities. This theory would predict a positive correlation. I'm curious if anyone has done a survey or experiment to test this.
Re: lotteries and elections
I've been discussing with my undergradute students the rationality of voting. People might get other benefits from voting besides thinking that their one vote can influence the outcome. Some people feel a civic pride in voting. Others vote to prevent others from telling them they don't have a right to complain, a comment complaint lobbed at people who don't vote. A problem with many of these reasons is that they do partly rely on the illusion that their vote does matter! Expressive voting is not a completely separate issue. Why feel pride in participating in an irrational system? Why not express your political views in a more efficient way than voting? etc. -aschwin
Re: lotteries and elections
In a message dated 8/31/04 8:36:29 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: A problem with many of these reasons is that they do partly rely on the illusion that their vote does matter! Expressive voting is not a completely separate issue. Why feel pride in participating in an irrational system? Why not express your political views in a more efficient way than voting? etc. It's irrational only if the cost exceeds the benefit. If someone gains a benefit from voting that exceeds their opportunity cost, then it's not irrational for them to vote. As far as other means, they mostly have much higher opportunity costs and might not actually have much more likelihood of affecting the outcome.
