Property Rights, Collective Action, and Public Choice: An Experimental Study

产权、集体行动和公共选择：一项实验研究

• 批准号: 0921733
• 负责人: Louis Putterman
• 金额: $ 18.09万
• 依托单位: Brown University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-09-01 至 2012-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0921733&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Property; Rights; Collective; Action; Public

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).The premise of this research is that a society's prosperity hinges in part on property being sufficiently secure from theft so that investing in production, rather than investing in protecting one's property from theft or engaging in theft, is an attractive alternative. The research employs the method of laboratory decision-making experiments in which subjects make repeated sets of decisions between allocating tokens among four activities: production, theft, private property protection, and collective property protection. In some versions of the experiment, subjects are asked to vote on whether the amount allocated to collective property protection should be determined in a mandatory way by majority vote. Subjects are motivated by the prospect of converting their tokens to real money at the end of the experiments. Mandatory collective protection mirrors public policing and court systems and is more efficient than strictly private protection. When protection of property depends on voluntary efforts, most individuals are expected to skimp on these efforts, trying to free ride on the efforts of others. This problem of free riding can be resolved by making allocations mandatory, and there is no incentive to understate the desired level of protection when making proposals under such a system. Experiments are conducted with subjects in four different countries (U.S., Germany, Mexico, Mongolia) to test whether choices, including those with regard to using the mandatory system and the level of collective protection, vary systematically from one population to another, possibly helping to explain lower security of property in less developed countries. The experimental method has increased in popularity in recent decades but its application to the question of property rights has thus far been minimal, with almost no study of emergence of property rights institutions and no cross-national study. The project will contribute to the training of doctoral candidates from Mexico and Mongolia. It will advance the development of experimental social science at Brown University and at the other sites. The results will be written up in scientific research papers and described for general and policy-maker audiences. The project should help to put the understanding of property rights and their variability across societies on a sounder footing, with particular value to social scientists and policy-makers attempting to fashion better policies to foster the economic development of poor countries.

该奖项是根据2009年的《美国回收与再投资法》（公法111-5）资助的。这项研究的前提是，社会的繁荣部分取决于财产足够有足够的盗窃保护，以便投资于生产，而不是投资于保护自己的财产免受盗窃或盗窃的侵害，这是一个有吸引力的选择。 该研究采用了实验室决策实验的方法，在该实验中，受试者在四个活动之间分配令牌之间进行了重复的决策：生产，盗窃，私有财产保护和集体财产保护。 在实验的某些版本中，要求受试者对分配给集体财产保护的金额应以多数票的强制性方式确定。 在实验结束时，受试者的动机是将其代币转换为真钱的前景。 强制性集体保护反映了公共警务和法院系统，并且比严格的私人保护更有效。 当对财产的保护取决于自愿努力时，大多数人都应该竭尽全力，试图释放他人的努力。 可以通过强制进行分配来解决这个自由骑行的问题，并且在此系统下提出建议时，没有动力低估所需的保护水平。 实验是针对四个不同国家（美国，德国，墨西哥，蒙古）的受试者进行的，以测试选择（包括使用强制性制度和集体保护水平的选择）是否系统地从一个人口到另一个人口，可能有助于解释较不发达国家的财产安全性较低。近几十年来，实验方法的流行程度有所提高，但是到目前为止，它在财产权问题上的应用是最小的，几乎没有研究财产权利机构的出现，也没有跨国研究。 该项目将有助于培训墨西哥和蒙古的博士候选人。 它将推动布朗大学和其他站点的实验社会科学发展。 结果将写在科学研究论文中，并为一般和政策制定的受众描述。 该项目应有助于将对财产权及其在整个社会的可变性的理解提高地位，对社会科学家和政策制定者特别有价值，他们试图采用更好的政策来促进穷国的经济发展。