Reciprocity and resistance to comprehensive reform

Urs Fischbacher and Simeon Schudy

Munich Reprints in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics

Abstract: Comprehensive reforms often fail, despite being beneficial to society. Politicians may block comprehensive reforms in an attempt to form vote trading coalitions in which they benefit from a piecemeal reform at the expense of others. Because formal commitment devices for vote trading are frequently missing, trust and reciprocity among legislators can play an important role for vote trading. We investigate in a laboratory experiment whether legislators will impede comprehensive reforms in an attempt to form vote trading coalitions even if formal commitment devices for vote trading after reform failure are missing. We find that open ballots allow for vote trading without commitment, based on trust and reciprocity. In turn, legislators frequently reject efficient comprehensive reforms in such institutions.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Public Choice (2013): pp. 1-18

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: Reciprocity and resistance to comprehensive reform (2014)
Working Paper: Reciprocity and Resistance to Comprehensive Reform (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lmu:muenar:20337

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Munich Reprints in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics Ludwigstr. 28, 80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tamilla Benkelberg ().