Voting for Experimentation: A Continuous Time Analysis

Abstract

This paper uses a laboratory experiment to analyze how a group of voters experiment with a new reform. The experiment implements the continuous time Strulovici (2010) collective experimentation model. I analyze a subset of data where groups and single decision makers should eventually prefer to stop experimentation and abandon the reform. I find three results that are consistent with the modeled experimentation incentives. In this subset of data, groups stop experimentation earlier than single decision makers, wait longer to stop experimentation as the number of revealed winners increases, and stop experimentation earlier than the utilitarian optimum predicts. However, I also find that both groups and single decision makers stop experimentation earlier than predicted. Additional treatments show that this result is unlikely to be explained by standard explanations such as incorrect belief updating or risk aversion.