Affect versus cognition: Wishful thinking on election day: An analysis using exit poll data from Belgium

Citizens tend to overestimate the electoral success of their preferred party. We investigate the extent to which Belgian voters overestimate the result of the party that they vote for and the factors that explain which voters do so more than others. Our focus is on the impact of educational attainment and partisan attachment on the overestimation of one’s party’s result. Previous research in this field has relied on data gathered in the months before the elections, which introduces a substantial amount of uncertainty and variation over time into the measurements of citizens’ vote share estimations. As an alternative, we investigate voters’ estimations of their party’s electoral success by means of data gathered in an exit poll survey. Our results show partisan attachments to have a strong impact on overestimations, which suggests that a wishful thinking mechanism is in play. Furthermore, we find that the extent to which partisan attachments increase citizens’ overestimations depends on a voter’s level of education.     

Privatization of public enterprises

In this paper the following results of a transition from public to private ownership are obtained: The manager of a public firm engages in less effort than is efficient; in a privatized firm the manager's effort is chosen efficiently. The reward to the manager of a public firm is more differentiated than efficient. In the case of an unfavourable economic environment the reward is higher than efficient. On the other hand, the manager in a privatized firm is always rewarded efficiently. It is irrelevant whether the public manager is incompletely informed about the particular mix of government's multiple objectives as long as the government chooses the incentive-compatible reward for the manager.

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Zusammenfassung Wird ein Unternehmen vom öffentlichen ins private Eigentum übergeführt, so gilt folgendes: Im öffentlichen Unternehmen sind das Ausmaß der Forschungs- und Entwicklungsinvestitionen sowie der Arbeitseinsatz des Managers niedriger als im Kostenminimum. Im privatisierten Unternehmen werden dagegen der Arbeitseinsatz des Managers und die Forschungs- und Entwicklungsinvestitionen in kostenminimierendem Umfang gewählt. In der öffentlichen Unternehmung führt Informationsasymmetrie zu einer stärkeren Spreizung der Managerentlohnung als im privatisierten Unternehmen. In privatisierten Unternehmen ist die Managerentlohnung so niedrig, daß der Manager nur seinen Reservationsnutzen erhält.