Rational Voting in Party Planning

I am in an a cappella group on grounds, and we are very democratic. We have to hold a vote in order to do anything, even when deciding to have a party. Last week when we were deciding whether or not to have a party, I went through the process of voting like a rational voter would. It would seem like the rational thing to do would be to vote, because there is little personal time involved with me voting – all I have to do is make my decision and send a quick text to our Social Chair.

However, to Johnson, voting would be irrational in my case. Firstly, as a fourth-year college student, my time costs are extremely high. Taking the time to vote on whether or not to have this party is valuable time that I could be using to do schoolwork, eat or sleep. Although the act of voting takes a second, casting an informed vote requires careful consideration of who’s going to be at the party, how long the party will be, the opportunity costs of going to the party, etc., which takes a decent amount of time. Secondly, the outcome differential was minimal for me. Having the party would not have given me substantially higher utility than not having the party. I had work due the next day, and I wouldn't have been able to do work that night had I attended a party. Lastly, my vote had little probability of affecting the decision. Even though there are only 14 of us, this party was going to be with our good friends from another UVA a cappella group, and I knew that a lot of our guys would vote to have this party because of that. Ultimately, my expected marginal benefit did not exceed my marginal cost of voting, and so I didn’t vote.

As I expected, we ended up having the party, but I attended and actually had a great time. Music from Earth Wind & Fire rang through the night, as it was the 21^st of September. Although my actual benefit from attending the party was greater than my expected benefit of doing so, I'm not surprised at my abstention from voting given my understanding of the rational voting theory. 

False advertising in LaGuardia

En route to Boston the other weekend, I was hoping to get some work done during my layover in LaGuardia. Rather than finding unlimited free Wi-Fi as I’d been expecting, I discovered that only the first 30 minutes were free. As a cash-strapped college student, I decided I’d do what I could offline and then connect for the 30 minutes if needed. When I finally connected to the free network, I was unable to access anything. I wasn’t entirely surprised, given the amount of traffic that LaGuardia must see on a typical day – 38,000 through Delta’s two terminals alone, according to this estimate.

It later dawned on me that this was an example of private markets acting to more efficiently allocate a public good. While free Wi-Fi is not a pure public good, it is non-excludable and as non-rivalrous as the capability of the server allows. Public Wi-Fi is non-excludable because there is no password and/or price, thus anyone nearby can connect. However, public Wi-Fi is not purely non-rivalrous. The speed of the network will slow down as more people connect, inhibiting the ability of those already connected to “consume” the Wi-Fi. With only one public network, users who are scrolling through Facebook and Instagram constrain the ability of those trying to utilize the network for work. When one considers the individual utilities of such proxy groups, SMC probably exceeds SMB. Thus, by imposing a cost to access Wi-Fi beyond 30 minutes - and an even higher cost if you want extra high-speed internet - the market allocates the good more efficiently. Thanks to this market mechanism, I was able to write a cover letter in record time. I wasn’t about to shell out $10+ knowing that I’d likely end up being the mindless millennial scrolling through her social media feeds.

What I would’ve tweeted @LaGuardia airport had I decided to pay: being able to connect to but not actually utilize a wireless network does not constitute “free Wi-Fi.”

Finding Prime Real Estate in Potomac Mills

            I went to Potomac Mills over the reading days to buy more business professional clothing for upcoming job interviews. For those who do not know, Potomac Mills is one of Northern Virginia’s least illustrious strip malls, but it is unparalleled in cost effectiveness and proximity to my parent’s home. Additionally, all the stores you could hope to find business professional clothing in are grouped together. Ann Taylor is next to Banana Republic, which sit across from Brooks Brothers and J.Crew. The products sold at each store are homogeneous. You can buy a brown, blue, or black suit, with barely a button out of place to differentiate the products, for about $200 at each store. The signs hanging in the window of each retailer advertised 30%-50% off of full priced items, sales attempting to beat out competitor prices between the stores.

            These stores demonstrate how competitors with homogeneous products will group together in order to maximize their demand base. As Hotelling mentioned in The Economic Journal, each retail store moved closer and closer together in order to maximize the amount of customers they reached since they were selling identical products. The stores attempt to choose the location and quantity price that allow it to have access to the most extensive section of the market. Ann Taylor seems to have claimed the prime location to do so, with placement that gives its store the greatest access to the rest of Potomac Mills in relation to the other stores mentioned. The marketing strategy did benefit the store since it was the most accessible women’s clothing retailer in Potomac Mills, and I left the mall with a shopping bag full of Ann Taylor apparel. 

Voting Factors

I, too, decided to go home during reading days, and when I got back to Salem I started to think about voter rationality. Salem is a small independent city in Southwest Virginia with about 25,000 people. As such, the whole community is pretty intimate - I can't go anywhere without seeing someone I know or having some random person text my parents that they saw me out. Salem is right next to Roanoke City, which is a bit bigger with around 100,000 people. Given the population differences and variance in community feel/climate, I started to wonder if the voter turnout rates would be different between the two localities.

In our voter rationality model, we concluded that it was rational to vote if the expected marginal benefit of voting + some variable D, that could represent additional factors such as lessening social pressure and expressive voting, was greater than the marginal cost of voting. My initial hypothesis was that in Salem, the value of D would be higher given the increased social pressure based on the intimacy of the community. Additionally, I figured that expressive voting would be more valuable in Salem than in Roanoke given the importance of social capital in a small town. Therefore, assuming that the expected marginal benefit from voting for the average Salem citizen is roughly similar to the expected marginal benefit from voting for the average Roanoke citizen (economically/geographically similar with same very small p of being deciding vote) and the marginal costs of voting are similar (proximity to polls, time to vote), then I would expect voter turnout to be higher in Salem than in Roanoke as on average the expected marginal benefit from voting + D would be greater in Salem. Voter turnout data for the 2016 presidential election supported my hypothesis as the voter turnout in Salem was 71.55% of registered voters versus 62.7% of registered voters in Roanoke City. However, it is possible that voter turnout in Salem is higher also because of lower marginal costs of voting, meaning it may be the combination of lower marginal costs and higher values of D that explain the difference in turnout.

Boulder's Soda Tax and Foot Voting

I went home to Boulder, CO for fall break for the first time in a while. Boulder is a unique city, and upon arriving back home, I found myself surprised again by the mix of the public goods Boulder provides. One example of this public good is Boulder’s sugary-drink tax, a two cents per ounce excise tax on sodas that voters passed in the 2016 election — the highest soda tax in the country, and one of only eight in existence. Additionally, to protect the mountain views, no buildings are allowed to exceed 55 feet in height.

These laws are unique in nature, and their passage was controversial — I was certainly annoyed by the higher cost of my soda when I got lunch for the first time since getting back. However, it struck me that these are the exact types of laws Charles Tiebout would have advocated. Boulder is providing a unique set of public goods to try and attract residents — allowing them to vote with their feet. Neighboring towns Lafayette, Longmont, and Louisville have neither of the above laws. Individuals should be able to choose where they want to live based on these laws — if people want cheaper sodas or taller buildings, they can live elsewhere. By Tiebout’s standards, these laws appear to be a success, as Boulder is growing at a rate well above the national average. However, Tiebout doesn't account for overflow of public goods to other localities (among other things) in his model, as I can live closer to the mountains in Boulder, but drive ten minutes to Louisville for cheaper sodas. Additionally, people in Louisville benefit from the unblocked views Boulder's building laws create, but can live in taller buildings themselves. Thus, factors not accounted for by Tiebout’s model may affect individuals living decisions, not necessarily Boulder’s unique set of laws themselves.