QRE, NSNX and the Paradox of Voting

Levine and Palfrey's QRE account of turnout in large elections raises the broader question of how much of a departure from standard rational choice theory is justified by the considerable repertoire of rational choice anomalies that has accumulated since Downs and Olson half a century ago. An a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of theoretical politics Vol. 20; no. 4; pp. 443 - 460
Main Author Margolis, Howard
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.10.2008
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects
Contradictions
Decision theory
Elections
Experiments
Games
Motivation
Rational Choice
Self interest
Social motivation
Utility functions
Voter Turnout
Voting
Voting behaviour
Voting turnout
games
paradox of voting
NSNX
QRE
experiments
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Summary:Levine and Palfrey's QRE account of turnout in large elections raises the broader question of how much of a departure from standard rational choice theory is justified by the considerable repertoire of rational choice anomalies that has accumulated since Downs and Olson half a century ago. An alternative but more controversial unconventional view turns on what I call NSNX motivation to account for how agents seek a balance between self-interest and social motivation. NSNX agents have irreducibly dual utility functions. QRE agents have a standard utility function but they do not maximize it. I review the situation showing why in situations where NSNX effects could be expected, QRE might mirror those effects. I show how, by varying parameters of an experiment, I can cleanly distinguish between actual QRE effects, which should bring predictions closer to the data than Nash, and NSNX effects, which should do the same.
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ISSN:0951-6298
1460-3667
DOI:10.1177/0951629808093775