Jan Sauermann
Biographic Data
| ID | 267242 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jan Sauermann |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jan |
| FAMILY NAME | Sauermann |
| SIGNATURE | SAUERMANN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cologne |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0550-0675 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 21 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Risk Preferences in the Delegation Process
Political decisions usually involve risks regarding potential outcomes. In an ideal representative system, voters should therefore evaluate politicians not only according to the policies they support, but also according to their inclination to take risks. In this study, we examine whether risk preferences affect voting decisions in an incentivized online experiment. Subjects assigned the role of politicians decide for the voters how much to inves…
Median voter dynamics in a laboratory experiment on voting over redistribution
Making and breaking coalitions: Strategic sophistication and prosociality in majority decisions
The effects of communication on the occurrence of the tyranny of the majority under voting by veto
The tyranny of the majority is one of the most frequently discussed problems of democracy in political theory. It arises when winning majorities are fixed and permanent, and there are no checks on the majority’s ability to dominate the minority. In this paper, I investigate the effects of communication on the occurrence of majority domination. Theoretically, communication cuts both ways. On the one hand, forming and maintaining a coalition requir…
Prosociality in Majority Decisions: A Laboratory Experiment on the Robustness of the Uncovered Set
Social choice theory demonstrates that majority rule is generically indeterminate. However, from an empirical perspective, large and arbitrary policy shifts are rare events in politics. The uncovered set (UCS) is the dominant preference-based explanation for the apparent empirical predictability of majority rule in multiple dimensions. Its underlying logic assumes that voters act strategically, considering the ultimate consequences of their actio…
On the instability of majority decision-making: Testing the implications of the ‘chaos theorems’ in a laboratory experiment
In light of the so-called ‘chaos theorems’ from social choice theory, William Riker (W. H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1982) argues that the indeterminacy of majority rule leads to voting cycles making democratic decisions arbitrary and meaningless. Moreover, when the core is empty, majority instability correlates with the level of conflict among actors. This study uses laboratory committee decision-making experiments to provide an empiri…
Gender Bias in Teaching Evaluations
This paper provides new evidence on gender bias in teaching evaluations. We exploit a quasi-experimental dataset of 19,952 student evaluations of university faculty in a context where students are randomly allocated to female or male instructors. Despite the fact that neither students’ grades nor self-study hours are affected by the instructor’s gender, we find that women receive systematically lower teaching evaluations than their male colleague…
Man, the Game Player: A Plea for Interdisciplinary Research
finkel, just to name a few. Note that keeping the different traditions of theorising alive and empirically studying social phenomena does not preclude an interest in the question of how these traditions relate to each other. In fact, it makes integrative efforts such as Herbert Gintis's insightful and thought-provoking Individuality and Entanglement all the more profound
Do Individuals Value Distributional Fairness? How Inequality Affects Majority Decisions
Committee Decisions under Majority Rule Revisited
Spatial committee decision-making experiments provide ample evidence for the predictive power of the majority rule core if it is not empty. Furthermore, an empty core does not substantively reduce the stability of majority decision making. In this article, I put these two findings to a critical test using two preference configurations from Fiorina's and Plott's (1978) seminal committee experiments. In my experiment, committees with fixed individu…
Restraining free-riders: The effects of actor types and decision rules in the public goods game
Many experiments comparing individual and group behavior find that groups behave more egoistically than individuals. However, most of these studies do not control for the influence of within-group decision-making rules that might have an important impact on group behavior. In this article, we report findings from laboratory experiments comparing individual and group behavior in a public goods game. We find that rather than cooperation levels diff…
The Effects of Training on Own and Co‐worker Productivity: Evidence from a Field Experiment
This article identifies the effects of work-related training on worker productivity by exploiting a field experiment that randomly assigns workers to treatment and control groups combined with data on worker performance before and after training. We find that participation in the training programme leads to a 10% increase in performance. Moreover, we provide experimental evidence for externalities from training: An increase of 10 percentage point…
Taking Others into Account: Self‐Interest and Fairness in Majority Decision Making
Research on the formal properties of democratic aggregation mechanisms has a long tradition in political science. Recent theoretical developments, however, show that in the discussion of normative contents of democratic decisions, the actual shape of preferences deserves just as much attention. However, our knowledge about the concrete motivations of individual behavior in democratic decisions is incomplete. Using laboratory experiments, this art…
Taking Others into Account: Self‐Interest and Fairness in Majority Decision Making
Research on the formal properties of democratic aggregation mechanisms has a long tradition in political science. Recent theoretical developments, however, show that in the discussion of normative contents of democratic decisions, the actual shape of preferences deserves just as much attention. However, our knowledge about the concrete motivations of individual behavior in democratic decisions is incomplete. Using laboratory experiments, this art…
The Effects of Training on Own and Co‐worker Productivity: Evidence from a Field Experiment
This article identifies the effects of work-related training on worker productivity by exploiting a field experiment that randomly assigns workers to treatment and control groups combined with data on worker performance before and after training. We find that participation in the training programme leads to a 10% increase in performance. Moreover, we provide experimental evidence for externalities from training: An increase of 10 percentage point…
Do Individuals Value Distributional Fairness? How Inequality Affects Majority Decisions
Prosociality in Majority Decisions: A Laboratory Experiment on the Robustness of the Uncovered Set
Social choice theory demonstrates that majority rule is generically indeterminate. However, from an empirical perspective, large and arbitrary policy shifts are rare events in politics. The uncovered set (UCS) is the dominant preference-based explanation for the apparent empirical predictability of majority rule in multiple dimensions. Its underlying logic assumes that voters act strategically, considering the ultimate consequences of their actio…
Committee Decisions under Majority Rule Revisited
Spatial committee decision-making experiments provide ample evidence for the predictive power of the majority rule core if it is not empty. Furthermore, an empty core does not substantively reduce the stability of majority decision making. In this article, I put these two findings to a critical test using two preference configurations from Fiorina's and Plott's (1978) seminal committee experiments. In my experiment, committees with fixed individu…
Restraining free-riders: The effects of actor types and decision rules in the public goods game
Many experiments comparing individual and group behavior find that groups behave more egoistically than individuals. However, most of these studies do not control for the influence of within-group decision-making rules that might have an important impact on group behavior. In this article, we report findings from laboratory experiments comparing individual and group behavior in a public goods game. We find that rather than cooperation levels diff…
Taking Others into Account: Self‐Interest and Fairness in Majority Decision Making
Research on the formal properties of democratic aggregation mechanisms has a long tradition in political science. Recent theoretical developments, however, show that in the discussion of normative contents of democratic decisions, the actual shape of preferences deserves just as much attention. However, our knowledge about the concrete motivations of individual behavior in democratic decisions is incomplete. Using laboratory experiments, this art…
The Effects of Training on Own and Co‐worker Productivity: Evidence from a Field Experiment
This article identifies the effects of work-related training on worker productivity by exploiting a field experiment that randomly assigns workers to treatment and control groups combined with data on worker performance before and after training. We find that participation in the training programme leads to a 10% increase in performance. Moreover, we provide experimental evidence for externalities from training: An increase of 10 percentage point…
Restraining free-riders: The effects of actor types and decision rules in the public goods game
Many experiments comparing individual and group behavior find that groups behave more egoistically than individuals. However, most of these studies do not control for the influence of within-group decision-making rules that might have an important impact on group behavior. In this article, we report findings from laboratory experiments comparing individual and group behavior in a public goods game. We find that rather than cooperation levels diff…
Committee Decisions under Majority Rule Revisited
Spatial committee decision-making experiments provide ample evidence for the predictive power of the majority rule core if it is not empty. Furthermore, an empty core does not substantively reduce the stability of majority decision making. In this article, I put these two findings to a critical test using two preference configurations from Fiorina's and Plott's (1978) seminal committee experiments. In my experiment, committees with fixed individu…
Do Individuals Value Distributional Fairness? How Inequality Affects Majority Decisions
Gender Bias in Teaching Evaluations
This paper provides new evidence on gender bias in teaching evaluations. We exploit a quasi-experimental dataset of 19,952 student evaluations of university faculty in a context where students are randomly allocated to female or male instructors. Despite the fact that neither students’ grades nor self-study hours are affected by the instructor’s gender, we find that women receive systematically lower teaching evaluations than their male colleague…
Man, the Game Player: A Plea for Interdisciplinary Research
finkel, just to name a few. Note that keeping the different traditions of theorising alive and empirically studying social phenomena does not preclude an interest in the question of how these traditions relate to each other. In fact, it makes integrative efforts such as Herbert Gintis's insightful and thought-provoking Individuality and Entanglement all the more profound
On the instability of majority decision-making: Testing the implications of the ‘chaos theorems’ in a laboratory experiment
In light of the so-called ‘chaos theorems’ from social choice theory, William Riker (W. H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1982) argues that the indeterminacy of majority rule leads to voting cycles making democratic decisions arbitrary and meaningless. Moreover, when the core is empty, majority instability correlates with the level of conflict among actors. This study uses laboratory committee decision-making experiments to provide an empiri…
The effects of communication on the occurrence of the tyranny of the majority under voting by veto
The tyranny of the majority is one of the most frequently discussed problems of democracy in political theory. It arises when winning majorities are fixed and permanent, and there are no checks on the majority’s ability to dominate the minority. In this paper, I investigate the effects of communication on the occurrence of majority domination. Theoretically, communication cuts both ways. On the one hand, forming and maintaining a coalition requir…
Prosociality in Majority Decisions: A Laboratory Experiment on the Robustness of the Uncovered Set
Social choice theory demonstrates that majority rule is generically indeterminate. However, from an empirical perspective, large and arbitrary policy shifts are rare events in politics. The uncovered set (UCS) is the dominant preference-based explanation for the apparent empirical predictability of majority rule in multiple dimensions. Its underlying logic assumes that voters act strategically, considering the ultimate consequences of their actio…
Making and breaking coalitions: Strategic sophistication and prosociality in majority decisions
Median voter dynamics in a laboratory experiment on voting over redistribution
Risk Preferences in the Delegation Process
Political decisions usually involve risks regarding potential outcomes. In an ideal representative system, voters should therefore evaluate politicians not only according to the policies they support, but also according to their inclination to take risks. In this study, we examine whether risk preferences affect voting decisions in an incentivized online experiment. Subjects assigned the role of politicians decide for the voters how much to inves…
Economics (11 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Microeconomics (6 works) · Positive economics (6 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (5 works)