Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/111194 
Year of Publication: 
2015
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 138
Publisher: 
University of Zurich, Department of Economics, Zurich
Abstract: 
This paper analyzes responsibility attributions for outcomes of collective decision making processes. In particular, we ask if decision makers are blamed for being pivotal if they implement an unpopular outcome in a sequential voting process. We conduct an experimental voting game in which decision makers vote about the allocation of money between themselves and recipients without voting rights. We measure responsibility attributions for voting decisions by eliciting the monetary punishment that recipients assign to individual decision makers. We find that pivotal decision makers are punished significantly more for an unpopular voting outcome than non]pivotal decision makers. Our data also suggest that some voters avoid being pivotal by voting strategically in order to delegate the pivotal vote to subsequent decision makers.
Subjects: 
Collective decision making
responsibility attribution
voting
pivotality
delegation
experiment
JEL: 
C91
C92
D63
D71
D72
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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