Testing Economic Theories of Electoral Behavior in the Romanian Context

In this paper we present the results of a laboratory experiment which seeks to test four of the most salient economic models of voting behavior: the calculus of voting model (Downs: 1957; Tullock: 1967), the expressive model (Fiorina: 1976; Brennan and Buchanan: 1984) and two models of altruistic voting – pure and warm-glow altruism (Jankowski: 2002). While the experimental design is embedded in the rapidly developing literature concerning experiments on electoral behavior, drawing in particular on the works of Carter and Guerette (1992), Tyran (2004) and Blais et al (2014), it also displays a number of original elements, being the first design that seeks to simultaneously test predictions derived from the four accounts of voter turnout. The experiment involved 165 subjects and took place during 18 experimental sessions organized in October 2015. The main findings suggest that turnout is mainly driven by the cost of voting and the probability of being decisive. Abstention increases when the cost increases and decreases as the probability of being decisive increases. These results yield slightly higher support for the calculus of voting model, followed by expressive voting, while altruistic voting was found to be the least supported.