Saturday, November 8, 2008

Ask Economists

A friend of mine started a new website designed to be an Economics centered question and answer forum. I should stress that it is very new and still in the development stages, but if any of you would like to check it out and say what you think, he would greatly appreciate the input. The website is called ask-economists.com.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

My Calculus of Voting

Public choice economists have developed a model to explain why people vote. The model is called the calculus of voting, and can be written as such:

R = p(B) − C + D

where

R = the reward gained from voting in a given election (R, then, is a proxy for the probability that the voter will turn out)
p = probability of vote being instrumental
B = “utility” benefit of voting--differential benefit of one candidate winning over the other
C = costs of voting (time/effort spent)
D = citizen duty, goodwill feeling, psychological and civic benefit of voting

Costs are always present, and the probability of the vote being instrumental is so small that public choice claims decisions to vote are largely a component of civic pride. Waking up today, I realized that my own calculus of voting was slightly more complicated:

R = pB − C + D + S + K + I - E

where

R = the reward gained from voting in a given election (R, then, is a proxy for the probability that the voter will turn out)
p = probability of vote “mattering”
B = “utility” benefit of voting--differential benefit of one candidate winning over the other
C = costs of voting (time/effort spent)
D = citizen duty, goodwill feeling, psychological and civic benefit of voting
S = Free Starbucks coffee
K = Free Krispy Kreme Doughnut
I = Free Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream
E = Distain from other Econ undergrads when I tell them I voted.

Compared with the totality of knowledge which is continually utilized in the evolution of a dynamic civilization, the difference between the knowledge that the wisest and that which the most ignorant individual can deliberately employ is comparatively insignificant. ~Fredrich Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty