The expected utility of voting

John Quiggin3 Comments

In the comments thread to Chris’ post on tactical voting at Crooked Timber, Michael Otsuka very sensibly suggests

I believe there’s an extensive, sophisticated social science literature on the expected utility of voting in elections which has made some progress beyond the speculations posted above. Could anyone who’s up-to-speed post a reference to an accessible summary to save us the trouble of trying to reinvent the wheel?

This brings me to one of those papers I’ve been meaning to write for years (I wrote a several drafts of a joint paper with Geoff Brennan, but we never quite converged), and which has finally (2005!) been written by someone else. The idea was to prove an assertion I’ve made quite a few times in academic papers, and here at CT, that, as long as voters have ‘social’ rather than ‘egoistic’ preferences, the expected utility of voting is independent of the size of the electorate, and potentially large enough to justify high levels of participation. You can read this paper by Edlin, Gelman and Kaplan (PDF file). There’s an excellent appendix on why the probability of a decisive vote is of order 1/n.

There’s still the question of why people vote when one side or the other is bound to win. EGK have a go at this, and in my paper[1] on the subject, I say

This approach, in which b [the social benefit of the preferred party winning] is a simple step- function, may be replaced by a more sophisticated one in which b depends not only on the party elected, but on the size of its majority. This would be consistent with the fact that there is a substantial, though normally reduced, turnouts in elections which are perceived as foregone conclusions.)

That’s not a complete solution, and I think it’s also important to consider that voting per se is considered as a social duty or as yielding social benefits, but I think it’s at least as important as expressive motives.

fn1. Quiggin, J. (1987), Egoistic rationality and public choice: a critical review of theory and evidence’, Economic Record 63(180), 10–21.

The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent

John Quiggin25 Comments

Brad DeLong has a great post on the puzzle of low US interest rates (made more puzzling by the sharp decline over the past week or two). It seems obvious that this can’t last, but entirely unclear when it will come to an end. The reasons he and I (and more relevantly George Soros and Warren Buffett) aren’t betting on, and therefore accelerating, the end are argued pretty well, I think.

I’ll add my own contribution to the discussion over the fold. It’s a comparison of views of the economy based on flows of goods and services and those based on asset prices. On the former (traditional) view, the signs of impending disaster are everywhere. On the latter view, it’s sunny skies as far as the eye can see.
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Weekend reflections

John Quiggin11 Comments

This regular feature is back. The idea is that, over the weekend, you should post your thoughts in a more leisurely fashion than in ordinary comments or the Monday Message Board.

Please post your thoughts on any topic, at whatever length seems appropriate to you. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.

Dead horse, assume the position

John Quiggin5 Comments

In a stunningly original essay in today’s Australian, Stephen Matchett assails ” Elitist dismissal of mass entertainment as intellectual ‘prole food'”, when it is in fact, “recognisably subversive”[1]. He’s quoting one Alan McKee, who turns out to be a fellow Brisvegan and (via Google) a colleague of mine at UQ. Reading between the lines, I suspect McKee has more to contribute than this hackneyed point (he makes a valid observation about omnivorousness and cultural capital later on), but he’s not well served by this piece.

No doubt there are people out there who still adhere to the idea of a fundamental and unbridgeable gap between art and mass culture, but I’ve followed debates on this and related topics around the blogosphere for a few years now without running into them (probably, they’re waiting for this Internet fad to pass before they get a computer). The real problem now is to articulate some sort of criteria from distinguishing good from bad that does not rely on the failed assumptions of high art.

fn1. I see this point being made all the time in cult-stud writing. No doubt it explains why the recent collapse of capitalism, in the face of withering postmodernist critiques, began in the United States, the home of mass culture.

Preferential voting for Britain ?

John Quiggin21 Comments

I was thinking about Chris Bertram’s post on tactical voting at CT and I was struck by the thought: Why hasn’t Labour introduced preferential (single transferable) voting in Britain? Readers will probably be struck by the alternative question, Why should Labour introduce preferential (single transferable) voting in Britain?

My first is that this would be an improvement in democracy, both for individual constituencies and for the country as a whole. Although no voting system is perfect, preferential voting is much more likely to produce an outcome that reflects the views of the majority of voters than is first-past-the-post.

I don’t suppose that an argument like this will cut much ice with the Blair government (or most incumbent governments), so let me move to the second point. Labour would almost certainly benefit from this shift, at the expense of the Tories. It seems pretty clear that Labour would get the bulk of LDP preferences, as well as those of the Greens and minor left parties. The Tories would pick up preferences from UKIP (but this group looks like a flash in the pan) and the far-right (but this is a small group, and there are disadvantages attached to such preferences, especially if, say, the BNP demands preferences in return).

It’s true of course that the biggest benefits would go to the Liberal Democrats, since their supporters would not have to worry about ‘wasted votes’. But even here, there’s a hidden benefit for Labour. Sooner or later, there will be a hung Parliament, and the price of LDP support will be full-scale proportional representation. If Labour introduced preferential voting without being forced to, it would not only cement LDP support but would greatly weaken the case for PR.

The remaining objection is that of additional complexity. This can be overcome, in large measure by adopting the optional preferential system, where voters can indicate as many or as few preferences as they choose.

Lies and more lies

John Quiggin36 Comments

The news of yet another broken promise from the Howard government is notable only for the degree of inflation we’ve seen in these things.

Asked in September last year if the Howard Government was giving a “cast iron” commitment that bills would be rebatable at $300 or $700 after the election, Mr Abbott replied: “That is an absolutely rock solid, iron-clad commitment.”

It’s hard to see how you could get more emphatic than that, and while the government as a whole has long since lost credibility, Abbott had something of a reputation as a straight-talker[1].

Most politicians lie occasionally and nearly all governments break (or fail to fulfil) some promises, but the Howard government goes well beyond anything in Australian experience. Whatever successes he may achieve, the debasement of the coinage of public honesty is something Howard will never live down.

The result of all this is, I think, a government that can hold on to office as long as it keeps on bringing home the economic bacon, but one that will never earn really strong public support and will leave a poisoned legacy for the Liberal Party in the long run.

fn1. Of course, breaking the promise was not his idea, but if he’d been willing to put his job on the line he could no doubt have faced Costello down.

My good opinion, once lost

John Quiggin17 Comments

At Larvatus Prodeo, and at Catallaxy, they’re debating the question of whether you can dismiss an author based on ‘a brief skimming’, which I’ll take, along with some participant in the discussion, to mean five minutes of reading.

My answer to this question, which has arisen before now on this blog is “Absolutely”. At skimming or fast reading speed, five minutes gives you 5000 words, which is more than enough to conclude that a writer is guilty of gross logical or factual errors, pretentious or illiterate prose, repetition of tired and long-refuted arguments, or simple inanity. The idea, commonly put forward in defence of various indefensible types, that you can’t criticise someone unless you have read every word they have ever written is simple nonsense. It’s true that there are people who produce the odd pearl among an output more generally fit for swine. But in such cases, it’s up to their defenders to point out the gems: the volume of words is so great, and the average quality so low, that a demand to read everything is simply impossible.

I should concede that, on one or two occasions, I’ve got into trouble through misreading someone in the first five minutes, after which pride and prejudice does the rest. But in general, five minutes is enough to form a well-founded negative judgement in a great many cases.

Strange deaths

John Quiggin7 Comments

I’m not sure if this is an occult link with the Zeitgeist, or just a manifestation of the reallocation of attention that leads new parents to notice other people’s babies, but a month ago, I finally got around to ordering “The Strange Death of Liberal England” (George Dangerfield) which arrived at Easter. In the ensuing couple of weeks I’ve seen not one but two uses of the same idea, with both Protestantism and Toryism dying strange deaths. Maybe this is happening all the time and I’ve just started noticing.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking

John Quiggin12 Comments

There’s been a lot of discussion about the ‘Australianisation‘ of the Conservatives election campaign in Britain, as represented by very lightly coded appeals to xenophobia and racism. But now the issue is settled. The Tories have pinched their slogan from B1 and B2

Actually, after posting this I realised that my blogtwin Tim Dunlop had beaten me to it ages ago, though he didn’t bother to spell out the Bananas in Pyjamas angle. But it’s still too good a story to miss.

Update 14/4 A day after this blog and weeks after Tim D, the Oz picks up the story

John Paul the Great ?

John Quiggin32 Comments

There’s been a lot of discussion of the late Pope, including whether he should be given the appellation “Great”. Historically, the honorific ‘Great’, when applied to monarchs, including Popes has not meant “Good”. Rather it’s been applied to those who’ve been successful in extending their monarchical power.[1] This is certainly true of Leo and Gregory, the popes currently regarded as Great. Although they’re both saints, neither of seems particularly saintly to me: rather they were hardheaded and successful statesmen.

In this interpretation of the term, it’s very hard to claim greatness for John Paul II. The church has lost ground throughout the developed world to secularism, and in Latin America to evangelical protestantism. Although there have been some modest gains in Africa and Asia, they’ve largely been in countries where the church had a strong presence dating back to colonial times.

Claims that the number of Catholics has risen greatly under JPII look dubious to me. This BBC file gives the basis of claims that there are more than 1 billion Catholics, and includes claims for more than 90 per cent of the population of Italy, Poland and Spain, based primarily on baptism. I suspect many of these are either nominal or lapsed.

If there has been growth, it’s largely due to natural increase in Catholic countries. To the extent that anti-contraception teaching has kept birth rates high, I suppose the Pope was partly responsible for this, but the same teaching contributed greatly to the collapse of the church in former strongholds like Ireland.

If you wanted to make a case for greatness for JPII it would be one of a fairly successful defensive action in unfavorable times.

In any case, judging by those who’ve been awarded the title by common consent, beginning with Alexander, Greatness is not a quality I admire much. And if we’re going for Goodness, I think John XXIII would be a more appealing candidate.

fn1. Fielding has great fun with this in Jonathan Wild, the story of the infamous ‘Thieftaker-General’, who became the Godfather of early 18th-century London.