Interested in moving to Nauru?

Nauru is unlike other countries in many ways: they do not collect personal taxes, they have no armed forces, and it is it the smallest island nation in the world (and third smallest nation, only behind Monaco and Vatican City). Another unique characteristic is that they are one of the only countries that use the Borda count in their national elections. In fact, they use a decimalized version of the Borda count called the Dowdall system, so the first choice receives 1 point, the second 1/2 point, the third 1/3 point, and so on with the last choice receiving 1/n points. This modification of the Borda count is extremely unique, and the only other time a similar system was used was in a 1925 Oklahoma primary election before it was ruled unconstitutional by the Oklahoma State Supreme Court.

Nauruans used this rare system just last week when their 7,000 registered voters went to the polls to select a new parliament made up of nineteen members from eight constituencies. Even though they have a very small electorate, voters could still choose from two to four candidates, and in the largest constituency, voters had to rank their preferences for eighteen candidates. (If you want even more economics to consider, think about the costs and benefits of learning about 18 candidates when the unemployment rate is over 90%.) If you want to see the Borda count in action, start arranging your travel now because you will need a tourist visa to be one of their 200 visitors per year! 

Mommy Martha and Her Free Riders

    I live in a house with 5 girls. We are all really good friends and living together has been a blast, but cleaning the house is not. We have assigned days that each of us cleans the kitchen and bathrooms, and every once in a while we will have a "power hour" of cleaning where we vacuum the floors, straighten up the pillows, etc. Overall we are pretty tidy people. However, one of my roommates, Martha, is very tidy. Her room is pristine. Martha is always tidying us and putting things away in the house, and has gotten the endearing nickname "Mommy Martha". While we all do out assigned jobs, Martha does much more. She vacuums everyday, cleans pans that are left in the sink, makes sure that every surface in the house is clear and cleans. 

    This is a class example of the free rider problem. We all want the house to be clean and tidy, but my roommates and I know that Mommy Martha will do the work if we don't. We lose the incentive to work because either way we will have a clean house. This creates a market failure in our house because the cleaning (the goods) is unevenly and inefficiently distributes. To fix this market failure in our house, I found this article on empoweringparents.com. This article helps outline some techniques to encourage children to do their chores. The free rider problem would not be as much of an issue if my roommates and I had greater incentive to do our chores. Who know if Mommy Martha will start paying us to clean our dishes and make our beds, but it would definitely fix me being a free rider. 

Who wants to pay $900 to live in a closet?

 The best time of year at UVA is in the early months of September and October when all of the different friend groups make the daring decision to sign apartment and house leases for the next year. Friends become enemies, enemies become friends. Around this time last year my friends and I hastily signed our lease for a lovely historic UVA home for 7 for a cheap $6480 a month. The quick nature of the lease signing meant we did not have time to determine what each person would pay for rent and finalize the rooms we would live in. Each room had features that made their renter want cheaper rent or made them willing to pay a little extra. One room still needed a door installed and was right by the front door, another was completely covered in windows and had an attached den area, one was basically a closet, and one didn’t have a closet. We all had different desires for the price and size of the room. Originally, we went on Split-Wise, put in the factors and saw the rent distribution. The reasoning behind their breakdown is discussed in this Blog.We realized that it made certain people’s rents higher than anyone was willing to pay (it was outside our triangle of possible choices).     

    Ultimately, one of my roommates was quick to the punch and made her own rent breakdown. She planned on living in one of the larger rooms. She reduced the cost of the larger rooms more evenly amongst everyone, making some of the minor adjustments to compensate for some of the smaller rooms. There were 3 larger rooms, 3 medium sized rooms and 1 small room. Her control over the agenda by choosing what the first thing we voted on was very critical. We decided on a simple majority ruling on the rent. Her offer was on the optimal line between the larger and medium sized rooms, but was not optimal for the smaller room. If the agenda had instead started with a rent distribution that was optimal for the medium and small rooms but not the larger rooms it may have passed. So, our status quo was outside of our optimal area of choices and ultimately the determination of which two groups passed the rent was based off the order of the suggestions. 

Simply Majority Problems in Choosing a Movie

 On Friday, one of my roommates had a bunch of his friends over, and they were trying to decide on a movie to watch. There were 7 or 8 total people, and I'm sure everyone knows how difficult it is to choose a movie with 2 or 3 people, let alone 7 or 8. One person had the remote, and as he scrolled through options, it became clear to me that the situation was an example of Mueller's discussion on simple majority voting systems. 

The indifference maps in this situation would be all sorts of convoluted, especially considering the fact that these folks were not exactly acting in the most rational sense (it was a Friday night). However, Mueller's point was still illustrated. Every time a new option of a movie came up, some people preferred it, and some people did not. There wasn't a single movie that had unanimity, and each time the option changed, it seemed to be a Pareto inefficient move because someone was made worse off. No movie was chosen by the group, and this illustrates the point that a widely accepted decision or even a pareto efficient outcome is difficult with simple majority collective action. Maybe its easier if we let something like this decide for us. But I don't think that would be pareto efficient either. 

The minimax-regret strategy for weekends

As the weekends approach, students are often faced with the decision between staying home, studying, and cleaning or going out, spending money, and making memories. Every week, the student faces a new dilemma in order to balance their academics with social life and extracurricular pursuits; as the semester progresses, the opportunity costs change with it. As midterms approach, students are faced with the choice between doing schoolwork or going to a party and the regrets of the options increase. Students may choose to receive a lower grade on examinations by going out every night, study every night and miss out on bonding experiences, or follow the minimax-regret strategy and balance their nights in and out. 

The minimax-regret strategy is defined by Mueller as choosing the action that minimizes the regret(the opportunity cost);the individual will make the choice that minimizes the maximum loss or regret. According to Resnik, regret can be calculated by, "subtracting the possible outcome for the option from the highest possible outcome among the different options." He applies this formula to investments in stocks, bonds, and mutual funds to demonstrate how the minimax-regret strategist will choose the option with the lowest opportunity cost and the maximum outcome. Without even realizing it, we, as the student body, make this type of decision on a weekly basis. We calculate the maximum outcome of receiving a high grade and the maximum outcome of going out and meet somewhere in the middle to minimize our regrets from how we spent our time during the weekend.

Unincentives of Voting

    We have talked a lot about how there is a lack of incentive to vote because there is such a low chance that one’s vote influences the outcome. This low likelihood makes people believe that their political opinions are not important or influential within the American political system. As a result, we have talked about other reasons as to why people decide to go vote. These include a patriotic view of the elections, a feeling that it’s your civic duty, and social pressures felt by those in certain groups. But something else that hasn’t been talked about quite as much yet are the barriers to entry that are created within the political system. I recently came across a New York Times article detailing in which states it is the hardest to vote. This article is reporting on the findings of a non-partisan think tank that calculated this ranking by looking at many facets of voting, including how early you have to register to vote, if there’s early absentee voting and if individuals can vote by mail. These barriers to entry, create something very similar to the market system, where there are laws that make it difficult to vote thus creating an environment that pushes them out of "market" of voting. This deincentivizes people from voting and pushes back against the previously mentioned incentives that people feel such as patriotism or civic activism. These factors or barriers to entry must be calculated into the formula Ui = p[IVi] + EVi in the EVi portion.  This formula considers both the physical impact that individual has on the outcome (p[IVi]) and the non-physical impact (EVi) or expressive voting has on their decisions to vote. One way that I interpret this article is that the lack of easy voting in some states could add to the feeling of civic duty that citizens in "easy to vote states" feel. This is because they feel that they have it better than others, and thus it creates like a feeling of obligation to vote when others may not have the option due to more rigorous barriers to entry.

    Overall, the impact of the emotional response (or expressive voting) that people have to voting has the largest impact on an individual's decision to vote. I feel that there are these external influences that weren't initially contained in the expressive voting idea, but should be considered as even though there are positive influences on an individual's decision to vote, the potential negative external influences should also be considered when describing and demonstrating the causes of people's voting patterns.