Biases and Strategic Behaviour in Performance Evaluation: The Case of the FIFA's best soccer player award

In this paper, we study biases in performance evaluation by analysing votes for the FIFA Ballon d'Or award for best soccer player, the most prestigious award in the sport. Our findings suggest that ‘similarity’ biases are substantial, with jury members disproportionately voting for candidates from their own country, own national team, own continent and own league team. Further, we show that the impact of such biases on the total number of votes a candidate receives is fairly limited and hence is likely to affect the outcome of this competition only on rare occasions where the difference in quality between the leading candidates is small. Finally, analysing the incidence of ‘strategic voting’, we find jury members who vote for one leading candidate are more, rather than less, likely to also give points to his main competitor, as compared with neutral jury members. We discuss the implications of our findings for the design of awards, elections and performance evaluation systems in general and for the FIFA Ballon d'Or award in particular.     

Targeted campaign competition,loyal voters,and supermajorities

We consider campaign competition in which candidates compete for votes among a continuum of voters by engaging in persuasive efforts that are targetable. Each individual voter is persuaded by campaign effort and votes for the candidate who targets more persuasive effort to this voter. Each candidate chooses a level of total campaign effort and allocates his effort among the set of voters. We completely characterize equilibrium for the majoritarian objective game and compare that to the vote-share maximizing game. If the candidates are symmetric ex ante, both types of electoral competition dissipate the rents from office in expectation. However, the equilibria arising under the two electoral objectives qualitatively differ. In majoritarian elections, candidates randomize over their level of total campaign effort, which provides support for the puzzling phenomenon of the emergence of supermajorities in majoritarian systems. Vote-share maximization leads to an equilibrium in which both candidates make deterministic budget choices and reach a precise fifty–fifty split of vote shares. We also study how asymmetry between the candidates affects the equilibrium. If some share of the voters is loyal to one of the candidates, then both candidates expend the same expected efforts in equilibrium, but the advantaged candidate wins with higher probability for majoritarian voting or a higher share of voters for vote-share maximization.     

THE 2005 GENERAL ELECTION AND THE ‘NULL MP’: A NEW APPROACH TO EL ECTORAL REFORM1

At the 2005 General Election the Labour Party won an overall majority of Parliamentary seats but won the votes of less than a quarter of the electorate. Such an outcome may raise concerns about the democratic legitimacy of the government. The introduction of the Null MP electoral system would solve this ‘legitimation crisis’: every abstention would be counted as a vote for a Null candidate, who, if elected in the usual first‐past‐the‐post way, would be assumed to vote against all legislation introduced by the government. Very different outcomes would have resulted had this electoral system been in place at the last two General Elections.     

Trends and developments in industrial relations and industrial relations law: Trade union discipline and non-strikers

Perhaps the most controversial change introduced in the 1988 Employment Act was the statutory right given to union members not to be disciplined by their unions for continuing to work during lawful industrial action approved by a majority in a secret ballot. Here the authors examine the legal contexts, implications for trade unions and the wider industrial relations and political significance of this important new right.     

Regional heterogeneity and U.S. presidential elections: Real-time 2020 forecasts and evaluation

This paper exploits cross-sectional variation at the level of U.S. counties to generate real-time forecasts for the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The forecasting models are trained on data covering the period 2000–2016, using high-dimensional variable selection techniques. Our county-based approach contrasts the literature that focuses on national and state level data but uses longer time periods to train their models. The paper reports forecasts of popular and electoral college vote outcomes and provides a detailed ex-post evaluation of the forecasts released in real time before the election. It is shown that all of these forecasts outperform autoregressive benchmarks. A pooled national model using One-Covariate-at-a-time-Multiple-Testing (OCMT) variable selection significantly outperformed all models in forecasting the U.S. mainland national vote share and electoral college outcomes (forecasting 236 electoral votes for the Republican party compared to 232 realized). This paper also shows that key determinants of voting outcomes at the county level include incumbency effects, unemployment, poverty, educational attainment, house price changes, and international competitiveness. The results are also supportive of myopic voting: economic fluctuations realized a few months before the election tend to be more powerful predictors of voting outcomes than their long-horizon analogs.     

Voting with a Hand on the Bible and Not on the Wallet: The 1996 Video Poker Referendum in Louisiana

Abstract . The 1996 gambling referendum in Louisiana provided a unique opportunity to study voters' preferences. At the time of the referendum, video poker machines legally operated in all of Louisiana's 64 parishes (counties). Video poker was voted down in 31 parishes and retained in 33 parishes. Voters also allowed the New Orleans land‐based casino and 15 riverboat casinos to continue their operations. The extant horse racing and pari‐mutuel betting were not voted on. We examine the economic, demographic, and religious factors that influenced how people voted on the issue of legalized video poker. This study is of interest because in recent years, legalized gambling has been expanding around the world. We know of no other referendum on gambling that covered an area as large as an entire U.S. state—all of Louisiana—and offered voters control over gambling in their locality. Months before the 1996 referendum, the news media suggested several factors that might determine the outcome of the vote. The media concluded that concern over jobs would be the major influence on the outcome. Other important factors included a campaign against gambling by Southern Baptist churches and the simultaneous national presidential election. We investigate whether these factors, along with demographic factors such as age and education, influenced the results of the gambling referendum. Surprisingly, we found no clear evidence that the economic health of a parish or the preexisting size of its gambling industry determined the vote. The presence of Southern Baptists in a parish increased the likelihood that gambling would be voted down. Democratic voters tended to vote for gambling, as did black voters. Age and education levels of voters did not appear to influence their votes on gambling. Voters in parishes that bordered other states were more likely to retain gambling. Overall, it appeared that personal values were more important in determining voter behavior than financial considerations. People were voting with their hearts, not their pocketbooks.     

Voting in the U.S. House on Abortion Funding Issues

A bstract . The Supreme Court's ruling in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services increased the political saliency of the abortion issue. Since pro-choice and pro-life groups within the constituencies of U.S. legislators paid closer attention to abortion-related roll call votes after Webster, the legislators' voting behavior on such issues might have changed as a result of the decision. Accordingly, voting model estimates for abortion funding issues before and after Webster are used to examine changes in the role of legislators' personal policy preferences and the role of policy preferences among their constituency on voting on this issue. The results show that legislators, to some extent, vote according to their personal preferences on abortion funding issues. Moreover, the influence of personal preferences on voting behavior did not change substantially after Webster, despite the change in the outcome of the vote.     

Measuring efficiency in the presence of head-to-head competition

We develop a new DEA model that measures organizational efficiency in the presence of head-to-head competition. Our model differs from existing DEA models that ignore competition (or any other form of interaction) among the organizations under analysis. The model assumes that organizations deploy inputs for the explicit purpose of increasing its own outputs while reducing the outputs of its competitors. We apply this model to the 2002, 2004, and 2006 political campaigns in New York State for the US. House of Representatives in which candidates spent money to increase the number of votes that they received and decrease the number of votes that their opponents received. We show that campaign inefficiency can alter the outcome of an election. Specifically, a loser would have won in six of the 57 races had he or she been efficient. We also show that incumbents are more likely to spend inefficiently than are challengers. Overall, inefficiency accounts for less than 5% of campaign funding but a loss of about 9% in votes received. We find evidence that campaign efficiency has increased since the passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, known widely as the McCain-Feingold Act.     

Maximizing political vote in multiple districts

This paper models a resource allocation problem in the political context. Voters and political candidates of two parties are positioned in each of n given electoral districts. We assume that each voter will vote for the candidate he is more attracted to. This attraction is modeled by an attraction function. Each of the parties now attempts to allocate a finite budget to maximize their objective, which is either the popular vote or the number of districts, in which the party has a majority. Individual scenarios are examined with respect to leader-follower solutions and Nash equilibria. The paper then describes a dynamic model that successively allocates existing funds plus additional donations to candidates in different electoral districts.     

Single-stage election procedures for large electorates

The Condorcet efficiency of single-stage election procedures is considered under the assumption of impartial culture for large electorates. The most efficient ranked voting rule is either Borda rule or a truncated scoring rule. A decision rule is established to determine the number of candidates, k, that individuals should be required to vote for, whether or not ranking should be required, and the scoring rule that should be used if ranking is required. This decision depends upon the number of candidates available and the probabilities that individuals will vote if they must rank k candidates or simply report k candidates.     

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF OVERLAPPING JURISDICTIONS AND THE FRENCH/DUTCH REJECTION OF THE EU CONSTITUTION

In seeking to protect their failed social model by rejecting the EU constitution, French and Dutch voters ironically contributed to promoting the very 'liberal' order they misunderstand and despise. When, as in federalist politics, functions overlap, two levels of government compete for the same votes in the same territory in the supply of similar services. Not unlike the tragedy of the commons in oil extraction, it is in the interest of both political authorities to seek to gain votes in implementing the programme first. The overall equilibrium supply of public services is excessive and both levels of government have a tendency to invade every field. Short of effective constitutional limits on the powers of the central government, a more decentralised EU offers an opportunity to overcome the common-pool problem of multi-level government.     

Playing the synthesizer with Canadian data: Adding polls to a structural forecasting model

Election forecasting has become a fixture of election campaigns in a number of democracies. Structural modeling, the major approach to forecasting election results, relies on ‘fundamental’ economic and political variables to predict the incumbent’s vote share usually a few months in advance. Some political scientists contend that adding vote intention polls to these models—i.e., synthesizing ‘fundamental’ variables and polling information—can lead to important accuracy gains. In this paper, we look at the efficiency of different model specifications in predicting the Canadian federal elections from 1953 to 2015. We find that vote intention polls only allow modest accuracy gains late in the campaign. With this backdrop in mind, we then use different model specifications to make ex ante forecasts of the 2019 federal election. Our findings have a number of important implications for the forecasting discipline in Canada as they address the benefits of combining polls and ‘fundamental’ variables to predict election results; the efficiency of varying lag structures; and the issue of translating votes into seats.     

Party loyalty as habit formation

In most democracies, at least two out of any three individuals vote for the same party in sequential elections. This paper presents a model in which vote‐persistence is partly due to the dependence of the utility on the previous voting decision. This dependence is termed ‘habit formation’. The model and its implications are supported by individual‐level panel data on the presidential elections in the USA in 1972 and 1976. For example, it is found that the voting probability is a function of the lagged choice variable, even when the endogeneity of the lagged variable is accounted for, and that the tendency to vote for different parties in sequential elections decreased with the age of the voter. Furthermore, using structural estimation the effect of habit is estimated, while allowing unobserved differences among respondents. The structural habit parameter implies that the effect of previous votes on the current decision is quite strong. The habit model fits the data better than the traditional ‘party identification’ model. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Endogenous party structure

This paper proposes a model of two-party representative democracy on a single-dimensional political space, in which voters choose their parties in order to influence the parties’ choices of representative. After two candidates are selected as the median of each party’s support group, Nature determines the candidates’ relative likability (valence). Based on the candidates’ political positions and relative likability, voters vote for the preferable candidate without being tied to their party’s choice. We show that (1) there exists a nontrivial equilibrium under natural conditions, and (2) the equilibrium party border and the ex ante probabilities of the two-party candidates winning are sensitive to the distribution of voters. In particular, we show that if a party has a more concentrated subgroup, then the party tends to alienate its centrally located voters, and the party’s probability of winning the final election is reduced. Even if voter distribution is symmetric, an extremist party (from either side) can emerge as voters become more politically divided.     

Gray Matters on Screen: Intelligence Agencies,Secret Societies,and Hollywood Movies

We normally think of government agencies as acting in a purely rational and instrumental way. In the case of intelligence agencies, we presume they rely on reason and science to protect the national interest. By contrast, the general view of secret societies and occult groups is that they engage in rituals and practices that have little or nothing to do with normal social intercourse, or even with reality. This article shows that these common assumptions are false, and that secret societies and intelligence agencies share many important traits. Our understanding of the CIA's role in supporting the production of Hollywood movies will be enhanced by taking these similarities into account. Intelligence work and the operations of secret societies are shown to overlap in five categories: religious underpinnings, occult practices to control the mind, cryptography, violations of social convention, and cryptic transparency—the ability to carry out secret activities in plain sight. These affinities explain why the CIA can promote movies that are actually quite candid in their revelation of the dark underside of the Agency. In so doing, the CIA projects a subliminal message that whatever questionable actions it takes are justified by a higher good, which can only be known by insiders.     

The proportional representation problem in the Second Chamber: an approach via minimal distances

Abstract  The purpose of this paper is to discuss the proportional representation problem in the Second Chamber of Dutch Parliament. Firstly, the present procedure for solving this problem is described, together with a possible alternative procedure, recently proposed by F. J. L isman . Next, the problem is formulated as that of minimizing some distance coefficient between the distribution of the votes of the electorate and that of the seats in the Second Chamber. For distances which satisfy a specific convexity condition a simple and straight forward algorithm is given for computing a distance minimizing seat distribution. The procedure of L isman is shown to have three attractive properties by which it is distinguished from the other usual procedures for solving the proportional representation problem. Finally, the principle of the weighted vote is introduced as a means of breaking the deadlock which always comes into being, because of the inevitable discrepancy between the vote distribution and the actual seat distribution.     

Can the majority lose the election?

One may believe that plurality voting guarantees that the preferences of a majority of the population are implemented. It is shown that by selecting platforms consisting of stances on binary issues the implemented stances may be misaligned with the population. In a model where parties are free to enter, a party preferred by only a minority can win. In these equilibria a third party pulls votes from the one representing the majority of the population. The result is shown to hold regardless of the number of issues, whether individuals vote sincerely or strategically, and allowing for coalitions.     

Practice and promise of formal supplier selection: a study of four empirical cases

In this paper an experimental study of formal decision-making models for supplier selection is described. Attention is paid to all phases of the supplier selection process: the recognition of the need for a new supplier, the formulation of decision criteria, the qualification of suitable candidates and final selection. It appears from the experiments that formal decision models may prove to be useful in various ways throughout the whole supplier selection process and in different purchasing situations.     

The impact of stakeholder orientation on sustainability and cost prevalence in supplier selection decisions

The stakeholder approach has taken a prominent role in the discussion of sustainability measures at varying strategic levels and corporate functions. Literature on sustainability suggests that firms have to cope with enhanced pressure from different stakeholder groups regarding their upstream supply management practices. At the same time purchasing managers face the trade-off between sustainability and cost prevalence in selecting new suppliers. Thus, it is of major concern for companies in general and purchasing organizations in particular to know and understand how purchasing managers react to the influence of specific stakeholder groups when it comes to supplier selection decisions. Following this notion we formulate six sets of hypotheses linking the adoption of ethical business culture to the prevalence of sustainability and cost criteria in supplier selection decisions to be tested in a path analytical model.Based on the results of an empirical study conducted with purchasing managers from multi-national firms located in Germany, this paper makes two major contributions: first, it sheds light on direct effects of shareholder, public, and customer orientation on the evaluation of the outlined-trade off; second, it investigates the indirect effects by introducing the formalization of ethical culture as a mediating variable to assess the impact of the three kinds of shareholder orientation on the propensity to select suppliers based on their performance in terms of social and environmental criteria as well as cost performance.