Student Commutes, University Presence, and Academic Achievements
Martijn Kobus (VU University Amsterdam)

We test for the effect of student commuting time on university presence and academic achievements, using information on Dutch university students. The endogenous nature of commuting is acknowledged in the estimation procedure. We demonstrate that students with long commutes come to the university less often, but when visiting the university, they also stay more hours, which results in a similar overall presence at the university. Consistent with this, we show that the effect of commuting on academic achievements is very small.

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Choosing Voting Rules Behind the Veil of Ignorance: An Experiment
Matthias Weber (University of Amsterdam)

There are plenty of situations in which different groups have to make a decision collectively – countries in supranational institutions, regions in chambers of federal states, departments of a university, divisions of a company, etc. Often this is done by voting in a committee with one representative per group. Then, the question of how the voting rule in such a committee should be arises naturally. There are a few theoretical concepts based on power index theories, which provide guidelines. The two most prominent of these concepts require that the Banzhaf power index be proportional to the square root of group size or that the Shapley-Shubik power index be proportional to group size. These concepts compete with utility-based considerations. This experiment investigates what kind of voting rules individuals choose when they do not know which group they belong to (and when they do).