Antoinette Baujard - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Antoinette Baujard
Under evaluative voting, the voter freely grades each candidate on a numerical scale, with the wi... more Under evaluative voting, the voter freely grades each candidate on a numerical scale, with the winning candidate being determined by the sum of the grades they receive. This paper compares evaluative voting with the two-round system, reporting on an experiment which used various evaluation scales, conducted during the first round of the 2012 French presidential election. Invitations to participate in the study were extended to around 5,000 voters in three cities, and the experiment attracted 2,340 participants. Basing our argument on the We extend grateful thanks to all the members of the Community Councils, all the participants, and all the volunteers who helped us on April 22. (See
with Isabelle Lebon, Herrade Igersheim Université Caen Normandie, CREM CNRS / CNRS Paris School o... more with Isabelle Lebon, Herrade Igersheim Université Caen Normandie, CREM CNRS / CNRS Paris School of Economics / CNRS University of Strasbourg Thanks to the team VOTER AUTREMENT including Thierry de Cordoue Hecquart, Jean-François Laslier, Sylvain Bouveret, Renaud Blanch, Vincent Merlin, Annick Laruelle, the elected officials, city staffs and the volunteer citizens of Hérouville Saint-Clair, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Crolles, Allevard...
Les droits de vote, les modes de scrutin en vigueur et le deroulement du vote dans les Assemblees... more Les droits de vote, les modes de scrutin en vigueur et le deroulement du vote dans les Assemblees generales des societes cotees sont ici analyses a la lumiere des theories mathematiques du vote. Nous nous concentrons dans un premier temps sur le cas du vote pour ou contre une resolution dans une assemblee, pour y analyser la repartition des pouvoirs. Nous etudions dans un second temps le cas du vote entre trois resolutions ou plus : nous presenterons les proprietes relatives des differents modes de scrutin utilisables ainsi que l'influence qu'ils peuvent avoir sur le type de resultats.
In April 2017, during the first round of the French presidential election, we performed a set of ... more In April 2017, during the first round of the French presidential election, we performed a set of experiments on the use of voting rules. Participants to these experiments were asked to test several alternative voting methods, like approval voting, and other variants of evaluative voting. The experiments were both carried out in situ in polling stations during the first round of the presidential election (using paper ballots), and on line during the month preceding the first round, and until the second round of the election (using a web application). A total of 6358 participants took part to the in situ experiment and 37739 participants took part to the on line experiment. This paper describes the protocol of the in situ experiments and the format of the collected dataset.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017
Our paper offers a novel reading of Sen's idea of justice, beyond the standard prisms imposed by ... more Our paper offers a novel reading of Sen's idea of justice, beyond the standard prisms imposed by theories of justiceresting on external normative criteriaand formal welfarisminvolving the definition of individual welfare and its aggregation. Instead we take seriously Sen's emphasis on personal agency and focus on his original contribution to the issue of objectivity. Firstly, we demonstrate that Sen's idea of justice, with at its core "positional views", is more respectful of persons' agency than would be a theory based on individual preference or capability. Secondly, we argue that Sen's conception of objectivity considers that both information and sentiments are relative to a position. Such an alternative approach to subjectivity allows the formation of more impartial views through collective deliberation and a better consideration of justice by agents themselves.
Articles, 2016
Cet article est une revue de la littérature sur les expérimentations de vote qui étudient les com... more Cet article est une revue de la littérature sur les expérimentations de vote qui étudient les comportements des votants et les propriétés des modes de scrutin. Tout d’abord, nous décrivons les expérimentations menées en laboratoire autour de trois aspects principaux : résultats agrégés selon le mode de scrutin, vote stratégique, paradoxe du vote. Nous abordons ensuite les expérimentations In Situ, typiques de l’étude expérimentale du vote, consistant à tester en marge d’élections officielles d’envergure des méthodes de vote alternatives. Nous étudions le protocole expérimental, deux enseignements généraux – l’accueil et les réactions des électeurs – ainsi que deux enseignements spécifiques – la comparaison des résultats agrégés et la description de l’offre politique telle que perçue par les électeurs.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015
This paper aims to show that, contrary to the standard understanding of his work, Sen's idea of j... more This paper aims to show that, contrary to the standard understanding of his work, Sen's idea of justice does not consist in the defense of a capability theory. Under the dominant capability-centered view, Sen's idea of justice is indeed characterized principally by a switch of focus from utility to capability. We demonstrate that this view amounts to the application of formal welfarism to capabilities. We reject this characterization and defend instead a heuristic account of the status of capability in Sen's thought: capability was introduced to make a point against welfarism, but this does not imply that a commitment to a capability theory. The capability-centered view is shown to be inconsistent with Sen's idea of justice, because the latter requires agents to be involved in the definition of their own welfare. Our study of the status of capability in Sen's view of justice enables us to relocate his main contribution and to build the basis for an alternative theory of justice.
Homo Oeconomicus, 2014
I am convinced by Alain Marciano’s argument (Marciano 2015). He remarks that consent to the condi... more I am convinced by Alain Marciano’s argument (Marciano 2015). He remarks that consent to the condition of choice is considered by neoclassical economics to be an external issue. And although it does remain an issue as far as the theory of rational choice is concerned, there too it is not unjustified to consider it as an external one. For libertarian paternalism, though, it becomes an internal issue as soon as the suppositions of rationality and perfect cognitive capacities are dropped. A dilemma thereby arises, because libertarian paternalists do not take seriously the issues raised by the absence of consent to the condition of choice.
Vrin eBooks, 2020
International audienceCe numéro spécial de la Revue de philosophie économique est tiré de la 4ème... more International audienceCe numéro spécial de la Revue de philosophie économique est tiré de la 4ème conférence internationale de philosophie économique qui a eu lieu à l’ENS de Lyon en juin 2018. Le thème de la conférence était "normes et normativité"
Public Choice: Analysis of Collective Decision-Making eJournal, 2021
This chapter focuses on the inner rationale and consequences of four different archetypal positio... more This chapter focuses on the inner rationale and consequences of four different archetypal positions regarding how ethical and political values are tackled in welfare economics. Welfare economics is standardly associated with the welfarist framework, for which social welfare is based on individual utility only. Beyond this, we distinguish the value-neutrality claimfor which ethical values should be and are out of the scope of welfare economics-, the value confinement idealfor which ethical values are acceptable if they are minimal and consensual-, the transparency requirementfor which any ethical values may be acceptable in the welfare economics framework if explicit and formalized-, and the entanglement claimwhich challenges the very possibility of demarcation between facts and values.
Voting Experiments, 2016
This chapter compares two experimental methodologies for studying how individual voting behavior ... more This chapter compares two experimental methodologies for studying how individual voting behavior changes with respect to the choice of voting rule. We concentrate on different versions of Evaluative Voting. The results are based on two types of experimental protocol: a classical laboratory experiment with monetarily-induced preferences, and an in situ experiment run in parallel with the 2012 French presidential election. In the laboratory, individuals use the different rating scales in similar ways; but this is not the case in situ. The difference may be due to the different ways subjects interpret the proposed scales (in particular negative grades) when they concern real candidates. Finally, the chapter discusses what each method can teach us about voter behavior. Notably, we highlight behavior that is in contradiction with the tenets of strict rationality. This phenomenon, which is very widely observed in situ, and where it may be explained by a motive to express oneself, is also observed in the lab, where it is still to be explained.
Revue économique, 2013
A l’occasion du premier tour de l’election presidentielle du 22 avril 2012, les electeurs de troi... more A l’occasion du premier tour de l’election presidentielle du 22 avril 2012, les electeurs de trois communes francaises ont ete invites a tester in situ le vote par approbation et le vote par note, selon trois modalites distinctes reparties entre les bureaux experimentes. Cet article a pour objet de presenter les resultats de cette experimentation. Apres correction des biais de participation et de representation, deux enseignements principaux s’en degagent. D’une part, le vote par approbation conduit a un classement des candidats qui differe nettement du scrutin uninominal et, d’autre part, quelle que soit l’echelle de notes retenue, le vote par note tend a accentuer cette divergence.Classification JEL: C93, D72
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020
Many voters seem to appreciate the greater freedom of expression afforded by alternative voting r... more Many voters seem to appreciate the greater freedom of expression afforded by alternative voting rules; in evaluative voting, for example, longer grading scales and/or negative grades seem desirable in so far as, all other things being equal, they allow greater expressivity. The paper studies to what extent the behavior of voters, and the outcomes of elections, are sensitive to the grading scale employed in evaluative (or "range") voting. To this end, we use voting data from an experiment conducted in parallel with the 2017 French presidential election, which aimed to scrutinize the negative grade effect and the length effect in grading scales. First, this paper confirms that the introduction of a negative grade disfavors "polarizing" candidates, those whose political discourse provokes divisive debate, but more generally we establish that it disfavors major candidates and favors minor candidates. Second, under non-negative scales, polarizing candidates may be relatively disfavored by longer scales, especially compared with candidates who attract only infrequent media coverage and who are little known among voters. Third, longer scales assign different weights to the votes of otherwise equal voters, depending on their propensity to vote strategically. Overall, we observe that the benefits of the expressivity provided by longer scales or negative grades need to be balanced against the controversial advantage these give to minor candidates, and their tendency to undermine the principle that each vote should count equally in the outcome of the election.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020
This paper proposes an alternative reading of the politics of the 2017 French presidential electi... more This paper proposes an alternative reading of the politics of the 2017 French presidential election, using an unstudied source of information on voters' preferences: experimental data on approval voting. We provide a new narrative of the election process and outcome. The principal approach for understanding the political context has for many decades been a distinction between left and right-wing political forces. We introduce a method for generating an endogenous political axis, and construct three indices so that we might understand how and why the conventional approach has become progressively irrelevant. We find no gender effect, but instead an age effect. Voters, especially those who belong to generations at the beginning or the end of their working life, use their vote in national elections to support radical change; and the younger the voters, the less they conform to a left-right axis. However, this desire for change does not represent a rejection of existing parties, as the official results would suggest. Rather, the approval results suggest an erosion in the voters' minds of barriers between distinct political camps, and between traditional and populist parties.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020
Our forthcoming book, Welfare Theory, Public Action and Ethical Values challenges the belief that... more Our forthcoming book, Welfare Theory, Public Action and Ethical Values challenges the belief that, until modern welfare economics introduced issues such as justice, freedom and equality, economists adopted what Amartya Sen called "welfarism." This is the belief that the welfare of society depends solely on the ordinal utilities of the individuals making up the society. Containing chapters on some of the leading twentieth-century economists, including Walras, Marshall, Pigou, Pareto, Samuelson, Musgrave, Hicks, Arrow, Coase and Sen, as well as lesser-known figures, including Ruskin, Hobson and contributors to the literature on capabilities, the book argues that, whatever their theoretical commitments, when economists have considered practical problems they have adopted a wider range of ethical values, attaching weight to equality, justice and freedom. Part 1 explains the concepts of welfarism and non-welfarism and explores ways in which economists have departed from welfarism when tackling practical problems and public policy. Part 2 explores the reasons for this. When moving away from abstract theories to consider practical problems it is often hard not to take an ethical position and economists have often been willing to do so. We conclude that economics needs to recognise this and to become more of a moral science.
Revue économique, 2017
Cet article vise à déterminer une répartition, le long d'un axe politique, des candidats à l'élec... more Cet article vise à déterminer une répartition, le long d'un axe politique, des candidats à l'élection présidentielle de 2012 qui soit fondée sur les opinions exprimées par les électeurs à travers une expérimentation de vote par approbation, plutôt que sur un positionnement a priori. L'axe endogène représentatif du paysage politique obtenu s'avère correspondre à un axe gauche-droite classique. Cependant, des analyses plus précises du comportement des électeurs remettent en cause l'hypothèse d'unimodalité des préférences politiques qui est généralement associée à cette structure. En particulier, l'attitude qui consiste à approuver simultanément des candidats situés des deux côtés de l'échiquier politique mais sans soutenir les candidats intermédiaires sur l'axe est largement répandue, et nettement plus fréquente chez les hommes que chez les femmes.
L Economie politique, 2019
Resume S'il n'existe pas de systeme de vote ideal, tous les modes de scrutin ne se valent... more Resume S'il n'existe pas de systeme de vote ideal, tous les modes de scrutin ne se valent pas. Les travaux experimentaux permettent de completer les predictions theoriques sur les defaillances respectives des differents systemes.
European Journal of Political Economy, 2018
During the first round of the 2012 French presidential election, participants in an in situ exper... more During the first round of the 2012 French presidential election, participants in an in situ experiment were invited to vote according to "evaluative voting", which involves rating the candidates using a numerical scale. Various scales were used: (0,1), (-1,0,1), (0,1,2), and (0,1,...,20). The paper studies scale calibration effects, i.e., how individual voters adapt to the scale, leading to possibly different election outcomes. The data show that scales are not linearly equivalent, even if individual ordinal preferences are not inconsistent. Scale matters, notably because of the symbolic power of negative grades, which does not affect all candidates uniformly.
Annals of Economics and Statistics, 2011
The aim of this paper is to propose a picture of French political supply in 2007 as perceived by ... more The aim of this paper is to propose a picture of French political supply in 2007 as perceived by voters, with no a priori ideas regarding the relevant political dimensions. Our study is based on experimental data collected during the French presidential elections on April 22nd, 2007. Two alternative voting methods were tested: the approval voting rule and the evaluation voting (2,1,0) rule. We provide an extensive analysis of the political supply in terms of simple political characteristics, derived from an MCA on the ballot data: groups of candidates are associated with different political positions with no a priori conjectures about political programs, societal trends, or candidates' valence. Classification JEL: D71, C93.
Under evaluative voting, the voter freely grades each candidate on a numerical scale, with the wi... more Under evaluative voting, the voter freely grades each candidate on a numerical scale, with the winning candidate being determined by the sum of the grades they receive. This paper compares evaluative voting with the two-round system, reporting on an experiment which used various evaluation scales, conducted during the first round of the 2012 French presidential election. Invitations to participate in the study were extended to around 5,000 voters in three cities, and the experiment attracted 2,340 participants. Basing our argument on the We extend grateful thanks to all the members of the Community Councils, all the participants, and all the volunteers who helped us on April 22. (See
with Isabelle Lebon, Herrade Igersheim Université Caen Normandie, CREM CNRS / CNRS Paris School o... more with Isabelle Lebon, Herrade Igersheim Université Caen Normandie, CREM CNRS / CNRS Paris School of Economics / CNRS University of Strasbourg Thanks to the team VOTER AUTREMENT including Thierry de Cordoue Hecquart, Jean-François Laslier, Sylvain Bouveret, Renaud Blanch, Vincent Merlin, Annick Laruelle, the elected officials, city staffs and the volunteer citizens of Hérouville Saint-Clair, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Crolles, Allevard...
Les droits de vote, les modes de scrutin en vigueur et le deroulement du vote dans les Assemblees... more Les droits de vote, les modes de scrutin en vigueur et le deroulement du vote dans les Assemblees generales des societes cotees sont ici analyses a la lumiere des theories mathematiques du vote. Nous nous concentrons dans un premier temps sur le cas du vote pour ou contre une resolution dans une assemblee, pour y analyser la repartition des pouvoirs. Nous etudions dans un second temps le cas du vote entre trois resolutions ou plus : nous presenterons les proprietes relatives des differents modes de scrutin utilisables ainsi que l'influence qu'ils peuvent avoir sur le type de resultats.
In April 2017, during the first round of the French presidential election, we performed a set of ... more In April 2017, during the first round of the French presidential election, we performed a set of experiments on the use of voting rules. Participants to these experiments were asked to test several alternative voting methods, like approval voting, and other variants of evaluative voting. The experiments were both carried out in situ in polling stations during the first round of the presidential election (using paper ballots), and on line during the month preceding the first round, and until the second round of the election (using a web application). A total of 6358 participants took part to the in situ experiment and 37739 participants took part to the on line experiment. This paper describes the protocol of the in situ experiments and the format of the collected dataset.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017
Our paper offers a novel reading of Sen's idea of justice, beyond the standard prisms imposed by ... more Our paper offers a novel reading of Sen's idea of justice, beyond the standard prisms imposed by theories of justiceresting on external normative criteriaand formal welfarisminvolving the definition of individual welfare and its aggregation. Instead we take seriously Sen's emphasis on personal agency and focus on his original contribution to the issue of objectivity. Firstly, we demonstrate that Sen's idea of justice, with at its core "positional views", is more respectful of persons' agency than would be a theory based on individual preference or capability. Secondly, we argue that Sen's conception of objectivity considers that both information and sentiments are relative to a position. Such an alternative approach to subjectivity allows the formation of more impartial views through collective deliberation and a better consideration of justice by agents themselves.
Articles, 2016
Cet article est une revue de la littérature sur les expérimentations de vote qui étudient les com... more Cet article est une revue de la littérature sur les expérimentations de vote qui étudient les comportements des votants et les propriétés des modes de scrutin. Tout d’abord, nous décrivons les expérimentations menées en laboratoire autour de trois aspects principaux : résultats agrégés selon le mode de scrutin, vote stratégique, paradoxe du vote. Nous abordons ensuite les expérimentations In Situ, typiques de l’étude expérimentale du vote, consistant à tester en marge d’élections officielles d’envergure des méthodes de vote alternatives. Nous étudions le protocole expérimental, deux enseignements généraux – l’accueil et les réactions des électeurs – ainsi que deux enseignements spécifiques – la comparaison des résultats agrégés et la description de l’offre politique telle que perçue par les électeurs.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015
This paper aims to show that, contrary to the standard understanding of his work, Sen's idea of j... more This paper aims to show that, contrary to the standard understanding of his work, Sen's idea of justice does not consist in the defense of a capability theory. Under the dominant capability-centered view, Sen's idea of justice is indeed characterized principally by a switch of focus from utility to capability. We demonstrate that this view amounts to the application of formal welfarism to capabilities. We reject this characterization and defend instead a heuristic account of the status of capability in Sen's thought: capability was introduced to make a point against welfarism, but this does not imply that a commitment to a capability theory. The capability-centered view is shown to be inconsistent with Sen's idea of justice, because the latter requires agents to be involved in the definition of their own welfare. Our study of the status of capability in Sen's view of justice enables us to relocate his main contribution and to build the basis for an alternative theory of justice.
Homo Oeconomicus, 2014
I am convinced by Alain Marciano’s argument (Marciano 2015). He remarks that consent to the condi... more I am convinced by Alain Marciano’s argument (Marciano 2015). He remarks that consent to the condition of choice is considered by neoclassical economics to be an external issue. And although it does remain an issue as far as the theory of rational choice is concerned, there too it is not unjustified to consider it as an external one. For libertarian paternalism, though, it becomes an internal issue as soon as the suppositions of rationality and perfect cognitive capacities are dropped. A dilemma thereby arises, because libertarian paternalists do not take seriously the issues raised by the absence of consent to the condition of choice.
Vrin eBooks, 2020
International audienceCe numéro spécial de la Revue de philosophie économique est tiré de la 4ème... more International audienceCe numéro spécial de la Revue de philosophie économique est tiré de la 4ème conférence internationale de philosophie économique qui a eu lieu à l’ENS de Lyon en juin 2018. Le thème de la conférence était "normes et normativité"
Public Choice: Analysis of Collective Decision-Making eJournal, 2021
This chapter focuses on the inner rationale and consequences of four different archetypal positio... more This chapter focuses on the inner rationale and consequences of four different archetypal positions regarding how ethical and political values are tackled in welfare economics. Welfare economics is standardly associated with the welfarist framework, for which social welfare is based on individual utility only. Beyond this, we distinguish the value-neutrality claimfor which ethical values should be and are out of the scope of welfare economics-, the value confinement idealfor which ethical values are acceptable if they are minimal and consensual-, the transparency requirementfor which any ethical values may be acceptable in the welfare economics framework if explicit and formalized-, and the entanglement claimwhich challenges the very possibility of demarcation between facts and values.
Voting Experiments, 2016
This chapter compares two experimental methodologies for studying how individual voting behavior ... more This chapter compares two experimental methodologies for studying how individual voting behavior changes with respect to the choice of voting rule. We concentrate on different versions of Evaluative Voting. The results are based on two types of experimental protocol: a classical laboratory experiment with monetarily-induced preferences, and an in situ experiment run in parallel with the 2012 French presidential election. In the laboratory, individuals use the different rating scales in similar ways; but this is not the case in situ. The difference may be due to the different ways subjects interpret the proposed scales (in particular negative grades) when they concern real candidates. Finally, the chapter discusses what each method can teach us about voter behavior. Notably, we highlight behavior that is in contradiction with the tenets of strict rationality. This phenomenon, which is very widely observed in situ, and where it may be explained by a motive to express oneself, is also observed in the lab, where it is still to be explained.
Revue économique, 2013
A l’occasion du premier tour de l’election presidentielle du 22 avril 2012, les electeurs de troi... more A l’occasion du premier tour de l’election presidentielle du 22 avril 2012, les electeurs de trois communes francaises ont ete invites a tester in situ le vote par approbation et le vote par note, selon trois modalites distinctes reparties entre les bureaux experimentes. Cet article a pour objet de presenter les resultats de cette experimentation. Apres correction des biais de participation et de representation, deux enseignements principaux s’en degagent. D’une part, le vote par approbation conduit a un classement des candidats qui differe nettement du scrutin uninominal et, d’autre part, quelle que soit l’echelle de notes retenue, le vote par note tend a accentuer cette divergence.Classification JEL: C93, D72
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020
Many voters seem to appreciate the greater freedom of expression afforded by alternative voting r... more Many voters seem to appreciate the greater freedom of expression afforded by alternative voting rules; in evaluative voting, for example, longer grading scales and/or negative grades seem desirable in so far as, all other things being equal, they allow greater expressivity. The paper studies to what extent the behavior of voters, and the outcomes of elections, are sensitive to the grading scale employed in evaluative (or "range") voting. To this end, we use voting data from an experiment conducted in parallel with the 2017 French presidential election, which aimed to scrutinize the negative grade effect and the length effect in grading scales. First, this paper confirms that the introduction of a negative grade disfavors "polarizing" candidates, those whose political discourse provokes divisive debate, but more generally we establish that it disfavors major candidates and favors minor candidates. Second, under non-negative scales, polarizing candidates may be relatively disfavored by longer scales, especially compared with candidates who attract only infrequent media coverage and who are little known among voters. Third, longer scales assign different weights to the votes of otherwise equal voters, depending on their propensity to vote strategically. Overall, we observe that the benefits of the expressivity provided by longer scales or negative grades need to be balanced against the controversial advantage these give to minor candidates, and their tendency to undermine the principle that each vote should count equally in the outcome of the election.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020
This paper proposes an alternative reading of the politics of the 2017 French presidential electi... more This paper proposes an alternative reading of the politics of the 2017 French presidential election, using an unstudied source of information on voters' preferences: experimental data on approval voting. We provide a new narrative of the election process and outcome. The principal approach for understanding the political context has for many decades been a distinction between left and right-wing political forces. We introduce a method for generating an endogenous political axis, and construct three indices so that we might understand how and why the conventional approach has become progressively irrelevant. We find no gender effect, but instead an age effect. Voters, especially those who belong to generations at the beginning or the end of their working life, use their vote in national elections to support radical change; and the younger the voters, the less they conform to a left-right axis. However, this desire for change does not represent a rejection of existing parties, as the official results would suggest. Rather, the approval results suggest an erosion in the voters' minds of barriers between distinct political camps, and between traditional and populist parties.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020
Our forthcoming book, Welfare Theory, Public Action and Ethical Values challenges the belief that... more Our forthcoming book, Welfare Theory, Public Action and Ethical Values challenges the belief that, until modern welfare economics introduced issues such as justice, freedom and equality, economists adopted what Amartya Sen called "welfarism." This is the belief that the welfare of society depends solely on the ordinal utilities of the individuals making up the society. Containing chapters on some of the leading twentieth-century economists, including Walras, Marshall, Pigou, Pareto, Samuelson, Musgrave, Hicks, Arrow, Coase and Sen, as well as lesser-known figures, including Ruskin, Hobson and contributors to the literature on capabilities, the book argues that, whatever their theoretical commitments, when economists have considered practical problems they have adopted a wider range of ethical values, attaching weight to equality, justice and freedom. Part 1 explains the concepts of welfarism and non-welfarism and explores ways in which economists have departed from welfarism when tackling practical problems and public policy. Part 2 explores the reasons for this. When moving away from abstract theories to consider practical problems it is often hard not to take an ethical position and economists have often been willing to do so. We conclude that economics needs to recognise this and to become more of a moral science.
Revue économique, 2017
Cet article vise à déterminer une répartition, le long d'un axe politique, des candidats à l'élec... more Cet article vise à déterminer une répartition, le long d'un axe politique, des candidats à l'élection présidentielle de 2012 qui soit fondée sur les opinions exprimées par les électeurs à travers une expérimentation de vote par approbation, plutôt que sur un positionnement a priori. L'axe endogène représentatif du paysage politique obtenu s'avère correspondre à un axe gauche-droite classique. Cependant, des analyses plus précises du comportement des électeurs remettent en cause l'hypothèse d'unimodalité des préférences politiques qui est généralement associée à cette structure. En particulier, l'attitude qui consiste à approuver simultanément des candidats situés des deux côtés de l'échiquier politique mais sans soutenir les candidats intermédiaires sur l'axe est largement répandue, et nettement plus fréquente chez les hommes que chez les femmes.
L Economie politique, 2019
Resume S'il n'existe pas de systeme de vote ideal, tous les modes de scrutin ne se valent... more Resume S'il n'existe pas de systeme de vote ideal, tous les modes de scrutin ne se valent pas. Les travaux experimentaux permettent de completer les predictions theoriques sur les defaillances respectives des differents systemes.
European Journal of Political Economy, 2018
During the first round of the 2012 French presidential election, participants in an in situ exper... more During the first round of the 2012 French presidential election, participants in an in situ experiment were invited to vote according to "evaluative voting", which involves rating the candidates using a numerical scale. Various scales were used: (0,1), (-1,0,1), (0,1,2), and (0,1,...,20). The paper studies scale calibration effects, i.e., how individual voters adapt to the scale, leading to possibly different election outcomes. The data show that scales are not linearly equivalent, even if individual ordinal preferences are not inconsistent. Scale matters, notably because of the symbolic power of negative grades, which does not affect all candidates uniformly.
Annals of Economics and Statistics, 2011
The aim of this paper is to propose a picture of French political supply in 2007 as perceived by ... more The aim of this paper is to propose a picture of French political supply in 2007 as perceived by voters, with no a priori ideas regarding the relevant political dimensions. Our study is based on experimental data collected during the French presidential elections on April 22nd, 2007. Two alternative voting methods were tested: the approval voting rule and the evaluation voting (2,1,0) rule. We provide an extensive analysis of the political supply in terms of simple political characteristics, derived from an MCA on the ballot data: groups of candidates are associated with different political positions with no a priori conjectures about political programs, societal trends, or candidates' valence. Classification JEL: D71, C93.