The Governance Game
In this paper, the authors use the lab to test a series of policy proposals designed to constrain rent-seeking behaviour in a policymaking context. The baseline governance game is conducted in the following way: subjects are randomly assigned to gr...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/245631487331766677/The-governance-game http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26085 |
| Summary: | In this paper, the authors use the lab
to test a series of policy proposals designed to constrain
rent-seeking behaviour in a policymaking context. The
baseline governance game is conducted in the following way:
subjects are randomly assigned to groups of four, with one
subject randomly selected to be the “policymaker",
while the other three are the “citizens”. Citizens are
informed that they can use their endowments to contribute to
a group account. Any amount contributed to the group account
are doubled. Once citizens have made their contribution
decisions, the policymaker observes the contribution
decisions of each citizen, and the total amount in the group
account. The policymaker formulates a distribution “policy”
to distribute the tokens among all four group members. The
game is repeated for 20 rounds. With this basic framework,
the authors implement and test the effect of three
institutions designed to constrain policymaker rent-seeking
behaviour: voting, policy commitment, and punishment. The
results show that voting and enforced commitment are the
most effective policy mechanisms to constrain rent-seeking,
and improve citizen welfare. The authors find policymaker
punishment regimes to be largely ineffective, both in
reducing rent-seeking and improving welfare of citizens. |
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