Date:
Monday, February 2, 2015, 12:00pm to 2:00pm
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12:00pm to 2:00pm
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K354
Presentations given by Arthur Silve - \'Democratic spillovers – rent-seeking
elites, mobile assets, and the coevolution of political institutions,\'
Mauricio Fernandez Duque - \'Anticipating Others Wrongly: Pluralistic
Ignorance and Underestimating Embarrassment,\'
*Abstract for \'Democratic spillovers – rent-seeking elites, mobile assets,
and the coevolution of political institutions\'*
This paper discusses the political consequences of international asset
mobility. Within a given country, the elite can extract rents from the pro-
duction sector, and they also produce themselves. The rents extracted are
distortive, and the elite face a tradeoff between extractive or efficient
poli- cies. Factor mobility favors more efficient, and less extractive
policies. The model yields several predictions. When the masses are mobile,
political in- clusiveness spills over from abroad, and rents are limited.
Conversely, if the elite are mobile, but the masses are captive, political
inclusiveness abroad buttresses the elite and favors political polarization.
Such a model provides interesting insights in the role of liberal democracies
abroad. First, they set up an international context in which patrimonial
regimes thrive, and in which their own economic and political outcomes are
negatively affected. Second, tax evasion is shown to be a necessary outcome
of asymmetric asset mobility in big countries. Such countries, including but
not limited to OECD coun- tries, favor the emergence and stability of tax
havens, with negative political consequences at home.
*Abstract for \'Anticipating Others Wrongly: Pluralistic Ignorance and
Underestimating Embarrassment\':*
Pluralistic ignorance is a situation in which individuals are act- ing in a
certain way out of their misconceived notions of what others want. Although
the concept was developed by psychologists, it has been used in political
science to explain the sudden outbreak of rev- olutions and persistent public
opinions. In this paper, I argue that past models of pluralistic ignorance
have ignored a crucial element: that individuals are acting out of perceived
social expectations, which are themselves formed through observed actions. I
introduce a novel game-theoretic model of pluralistic ignorance with this
feature, and argue that it poses a puzzle: the likelihood of pluralistic
ignorance vanishes as the number of individuals increases. In order to
explain how pluralistic ignorance can be maintained in large populations, I
introduce an inferential bias that is often alluded to in the psychol- ogy
literature: individuals underestimate others’ embarassment when making
their decisions.
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[1] webcal://www.iq.harvard.edu/calendar/export.ics/279031
[2] http://www.iq.harvard.edu/calendar/export.ics/279031