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** README file **

Data and reproduction material for: 
"Flip a coin or vote?
An experiment on the implementation and efficiency of social choice mechanisms."

By Sander Renes and Timo Hoffmann, published in Experimental Economics

This file was created by Sander Renes on June 11, 2021
This version June 14, 2021

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** reproduction of results **


To recreate the results in the paper, run the scripts in this folder in the order of the numbers in their names

Step 0, generate data from experimental files in the folder 'experimental_files'
Data is generated from the experimental files in the folder 'experimental_files' by the Stata-do-file '0 Load_raw_data.do', this requires the file 'ztree2stata.ado' which is included in the main folder. 
The data is stored in Stata native format in the folder 'Data_files/Sessions' per session.

The complete dataset is stored as 'experimental_data_flip_a_coin.dta' in the folder 'Data_files'. A copy of this dataset is stored as 'experimental_data_flip_a_coin.csv'

Step 1-3, generate results:

The results are generated by the combination of 
'1. reproduction-Flip-a-coin-or-vote.do'
'2. choice_comparisons.R'
'3 expected surplus calculations behavioral strategy.Rmd'

** output of the reproduction code **

Before the data was uploaded al codes were checked by running them. The ouput is stored by the code automatically.
All output and intermediate data-files generated in the reproduction are included in the folders ‘output’ and ‘Data_files’. 
If the code is run again, these files will be overwritten. 

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** help files** 

The files 
'figures and tables with source.xlsx' 
'figures and tables with source.pdf'
 
Contain a description of what figure or table is generated by what script for fast referencing. 

The main data-file is 
'data_exAnte_comparisons.dta' 
It contains all the relevant data for the paper. For cross-platform compatibility a copy in a csv-format is stored as:
experimental_data_flip_a_coin.csv

For all variables in this dataset, a short description of its meaning and encoding is found in:
‘variables - Flip a coin or vote.pdf’
‘variables - Flip a coin or vote.xlsx’



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** experimental files ** 
Both the data generated by the experiment as the experimental codes ran are stored in the folder 'exeprimental_files'.
In this folder you can find 9 folders, 1 per session that was run.
All sessions are identified both by the date (and time if necessary) and session number in the name of the folder.
For every session we store the experimental code and treatment ran in zTree in the folder 'zTree'
the data generated is stored in zTree native format in the folder 'Data_Session_XX_XXXXXX'
The main folder contains back-ups of the data generated to prevent accidental corruption.