Right in the Short Run

Earlier this year Andrew Gelman and co. came up with a new argument solving the voting paradox, based on social preferences (the paradox of voting: if you are rational, you will realize that the probability of affecting the outcome of a vote is negligible, while the costs are often considerable. Yet still people vote regularly).

Social preference is basically the idea that individuals incorporate other people’s utility into their considerations.

Gelman argues that if individuals take into consideration the impact of a vote’s outcome on other individual’s in society, as well as themselves, voting may indeed be rational.

A recent experimental paper by Fisman, Kariv and Markovits shows that some people do indeed have social preferences.

Voters, congratulations.