Dimitri Landa - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Dimitri Landa
… England Journal of …, 2010
Green et al.(July 16 issue) 1 report that the disclosure of a positive apolipoprotein E (APOE) ge... more Green et al.(July 16 issue) 1 report that the disclosure of a positive apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotyping result to adult children of patients with Alzheimer's disease led to no short-term increases in depression or anxiety relative to a control group of subjects who underwent ...
Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2007
We present a game-theoretic model of the social dynamics of belief change in which the (relevant)... more We present a game-theoretic model of the social dynamics of belief change in which the (relevant) logically non-omniscient audience becomes convinced that the speakers' messages are 'true' because its own prior beliefs logically entail them, rather than-as in cheap-talk models-because the speaker is (endogenously) trustworthy. We characterize the equilibria of the game and consider how their aggregate informational properties change with the variation in the institutions determining the ability of the speakers to reach their audience. We find that for plausible restrictions on the distribution of arguments and on the corresponding policy preferences in society, the informationally optimal institutions are first-best implementable, inegalitarian with respect to the resource allocation across speakers, and assign priority to the (more) extreme argument-and policyholders. KEY WORDS. deliberation. non-Bayesian learning. institutions This article was initially circulated under the title 'Deliberation as Self-Discovery' (2003). We received valuable comments from audiences at
We present a game-theoretic model of debate and a laboratory experiment that explore how strategi... more We present a game-theoretic model of debate and a laboratory experiment that explore how strategic incentives to make potentially persuasive arguments vary across different informational and institutional contexts. In our model, a key feature of the informational environment is the extent to which members of a debate audience are able to extract informational content from exposure to an argument that they find unconvincing. Our theoretical results show that when the informational content of unconvincing arguments is relatively high, speakers are discouraged from arguing irrespective of the distinct institutional rules of debate that we consider. By contrast, when the informational content of unconvincing arguments is relatively low, debate rules matter: speakers may be lead towards maximally or minimally informative debate, depending on the debate rule. In a laboratory experiment, we vary the informational and institutional settings for debate across four distinct treatments, and ob...
University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, 2008
How do disagreements between judges on collegial (multimember) courts affect legal policy? We add... more How do disagreements between judges on collegial (multimember) courts affect legal policy? We address this question by developing an account of the nature of judicial disagreements in the case-space model of judicial choice. We distinguish between different types of disagreement, from disagreements about case facts to disagreements about how legal rules should treat varying case facts, and consider some of the key features of collegial decision making under the circumstances characterized by these different types of disagreements. We argue that attempts to develop collegial legal policy against the background of such disagreements pose distinct challenges with respect to policy interpretation and implementation. These challenges must be confronted by a legal theory and jurisprudence that envision a place for collegial courts.
This supplement addresses four things. First, we present a few supplemental results that were use... more This supplement addresses four things. First, we present a few supplemental results that were used in the main paper. Second, we consider the style of information provision in our model (Appendix B). Third, we show that our results are robust to the case where agents imperfectly observe the leader’s policy (Appendix C). Fourth, we consider the leader’s decision to alter the coercive cost (Appendix D).
When is it better to bundle policy-tasks into a single office versus unbundle them into separate ... more When is it better to bundle policy-tasks into a single office versus unbundle them into separate offices? Which institutional arrangement is better for preventing interest group capture? How does transparency of political agent's actions affect the relative merits of both institutional frameworks? We consider a simple career-concerns model of political accountability with variation in complexity across policy areas. We find that when relative policy area complexities are sufficiently high and symmetric, bundling policy areas may lead to higher total effort, selection of more more competent politicians and better resistance to policy capture by special interests than unbundling. The opposite is true when policy area complexities are sufficiently asymmetric. While the effect of the possibility of interest group capture under unbundling conforms to standard intuitions, we show that under bundling: (1) interest groups may have negative spillover effects across policy areas under bun...
To explore the effect of federal institutions on national political conflict, we develop a model ... more To explore the effect of federal institutions on national political conflict, we develop a model of two-level governance with interstate preference heterogeneity and cross-state externalities. Our analysis calls into question the conventional interpretation of federalism as a conflict-minimizing institution. We show that polarization over national policy may be higher in federal than unitary systems, even holding policy demand constant. We also show that the incentives for low and high demanders to engage in costly conflict are contingent on the status quo national policy, and we identify conditions under which those incentives and the deadweight cost of political conflict are higher under federalism than unitary governance. The model helps account for a number of empirical regularities in US politics and policy making.
SSRN Electronic Journal
How do shared problems affect politics and policy in a divided society? We examine some common in... more How do shared problems affect politics and policy in a divided society? We examine some common intuitions about preference polarization and policy-making in light of such problems and show that the relationships they imply are fundamentally contingent. When actors' individual costs from a policy addressing a commonly shared problem differ, their preferences over the appropriate policy respond asymmetrically to increases in the magnitude of the problem. In a broad range of circumstances such increases can give rise to increased polarization, but may also simultaneously yield policy adjustments rather than entrenchment of gridlock. The association of polarization and gridlock is contingent on two underlying factors: how the problem responds to the policy solution, and the location of the status quo policy when the extent of the problem changes. We illustrate the model's logic by comparing U.S. national policy making in the Progressive Era and the present.
Journal of Political Philosophy
PS: Political Science & Politics
SSRN Electronic Journal
In a laboratory investigation of a principal-agent relationship with moral hazard, we analyse str... more In a laboratory investigation of a principal-agent relationship with moral hazard, we analyse strategically induced discrimination. We isolate the influence of the strategic environment from the e↵ects of other sources of discrimination, including group statistics and taste for discrimination. We find that, in a strategic setting, principals who reward agents contingent on agent-generated outcomes also attribute good outcomes more readily to e↵ort when they share a social identity with the agent. No such bias emerges either for principals whose reward decisions are not contingent on outcomes or for the principals in a non-strategic environment. In the strategic setting, agents tend to anticipate lower demands from same-identity principals and condition their e↵ort choice on that expectation. We argue that these choices are not driven by reciprocity but related to attitudes toward risk.
American Journal of Political Science
… England Journal of …, 2010
Green et al.(July 16 issue) 1 report that the disclosure of a positive apolipoprotein E (APOE) ge... more Green et al.(July 16 issue) 1 report that the disclosure of a positive apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotyping result to adult children of patients with Alzheimer's disease led to no short-term increases in depression or anxiety relative to a control group of subjects who underwent ...
Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2007
We present a game-theoretic model of the social dynamics of belief change in which the (relevant)... more We present a game-theoretic model of the social dynamics of belief change in which the (relevant) logically non-omniscient audience becomes convinced that the speakers' messages are 'true' because its own prior beliefs logically entail them, rather than-as in cheap-talk models-because the speaker is (endogenously) trustworthy. We characterize the equilibria of the game and consider how their aggregate informational properties change with the variation in the institutions determining the ability of the speakers to reach their audience. We find that for plausible restrictions on the distribution of arguments and on the corresponding policy preferences in society, the informationally optimal institutions are first-best implementable, inegalitarian with respect to the resource allocation across speakers, and assign priority to the (more) extreme argument-and policyholders. KEY WORDS. deliberation. non-Bayesian learning. institutions This article was initially circulated under the title 'Deliberation as Self-Discovery' (2003). We received valuable comments from audiences at
We present a game-theoretic model of debate and a laboratory experiment that explore how strategi... more We present a game-theoretic model of debate and a laboratory experiment that explore how strategic incentives to make potentially persuasive arguments vary across different informational and institutional contexts. In our model, a key feature of the informational environment is the extent to which members of a debate audience are able to extract informational content from exposure to an argument that they find unconvincing. Our theoretical results show that when the informational content of unconvincing arguments is relatively high, speakers are discouraged from arguing irrespective of the distinct institutional rules of debate that we consider. By contrast, when the informational content of unconvincing arguments is relatively low, debate rules matter: speakers may be lead towards maximally or minimally informative debate, depending on the debate rule. In a laboratory experiment, we vary the informational and institutional settings for debate across four distinct treatments, and ob...
University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, 2008
How do disagreements between judges on collegial (multimember) courts affect legal policy? We add... more How do disagreements between judges on collegial (multimember) courts affect legal policy? We address this question by developing an account of the nature of judicial disagreements in the case-space model of judicial choice. We distinguish between different types of disagreement, from disagreements about case facts to disagreements about how legal rules should treat varying case facts, and consider some of the key features of collegial decision making under the circumstances characterized by these different types of disagreements. We argue that attempts to develop collegial legal policy against the background of such disagreements pose distinct challenges with respect to policy interpretation and implementation. These challenges must be confronted by a legal theory and jurisprudence that envision a place for collegial courts.
This supplement addresses four things. First, we present a few supplemental results that were use... more This supplement addresses four things. First, we present a few supplemental results that were used in the main paper. Second, we consider the style of information provision in our model (Appendix B). Third, we show that our results are robust to the case where agents imperfectly observe the leader’s policy (Appendix C). Fourth, we consider the leader’s decision to alter the coercive cost (Appendix D).
When is it better to bundle policy-tasks into a single office versus unbundle them into separate ... more When is it better to bundle policy-tasks into a single office versus unbundle them into separate offices? Which institutional arrangement is better for preventing interest group capture? How does transparency of political agent's actions affect the relative merits of both institutional frameworks? We consider a simple career-concerns model of political accountability with variation in complexity across policy areas. We find that when relative policy area complexities are sufficiently high and symmetric, bundling policy areas may lead to higher total effort, selection of more more competent politicians and better resistance to policy capture by special interests than unbundling. The opposite is true when policy area complexities are sufficiently asymmetric. While the effect of the possibility of interest group capture under unbundling conforms to standard intuitions, we show that under bundling: (1) interest groups may have negative spillover effects across policy areas under bun...
To explore the effect of federal institutions on national political conflict, we develop a model ... more To explore the effect of federal institutions on national political conflict, we develop a model of two-level governance with interstate preference heterogeneity and cross-state externalities. Our analysis calls into question the conventional interpretation of federalism as a conflict-minimizing institution. We show that polarization over national policy may be higher in federal than unitary systems, even holding policy demand constant. We also show that the incentives for low and high demanders to engage in costly conflict are contingent on the status quo national policy, and we identify conditions under which those incentives and the deadweight cost of political conflict are higher under federalism than unitary governance. The model helps account for a number of empirical regularities in US politics and policy making.
SSRN Electronic Journal
How do shared problems affect politics and policy in a divided society? We examine some common in... more How do shared problems affect politics and policy in a divided society? We examine some common intuitions about preference polarization and policy-making in light of such problems and show that the relationships they imply are fundamentally contingent. When actors' individual costs from a policy addressing a commonly shared problem differ, their preferences over the appropriate policy respond asymmetrically to increases in the magnitude of the problem. In a broad range of circumstances such increases can give rise to increased polarization, but may also simultaneously yield policy adjustments rather than entrenchment of gridlock. The association of polarization and gridlock is contingent on two underlying factors: how the problem responds to the policy solution, and the location of the status quo policy when the extent of the problem changes. We illustrate the model's logic by comparing U.S. national policy making in the Progressive Era and the present.
Journal of Political Philosophy
PS: Political Science & Politics
SSRN Electronic Journal
In a laboratory investigation of a principal-agent relationship with moral hazard, we analyse str... more In a laboratory investigation of a principal-agent relationship with moral hazard, we analyse strategically induced discrimination. We isolate the influence of the strategic environment from the e↵ects of other sources of discrimination, including group statistics and taste for discrimination. We find that, in a strategic setting, principals who reward agents contingent on agent-generated outcomes also attribute good outcomes more readily to e↵ort when they share a social identity with the agent. No such bias emerges either for principals whose reward decisions are not contingent on outcomes or for the principals in a non-strategic environment. In the strategic setting, agents tend to anticipate lower demands from same-identity principals and condition their e↵ort choice on that expectation. We argue that these choices are not driven by reciprocity but related to attitudes toward risk.
American Journal of Political Science