Trimming of extreme votes and favoritism: Evidence from the field

TL;DR

This study provides empirical evidence that trimming extreme votes reduces favoritism in panel evaluations, leading to more impartial assessments across different countries.

Contribution

First real-world evidence showing that trimming extreme votes diminishes favoritism in subjective evaluations across countries.

Findings

Experts give higher scores to compatriots without trimming.

Trimming reduces significant favoritism in evaluations.

Evidence from 29,383 evaluations supports the effectiveness of trimming.

Abstract

Despite a large body of theoretical literature on voting mechanisms, there is no documented evidence from real-world panel evaluations about the effect of trimming the extreme votes on sincere voting. We provide the first such evidence by comparing subjective evaluations of experts from different countries in competitive settings with and without a trimming mechanism. In these evaluations, some of the evaluated subjects are experts' compatriots. Using data on 29,383 subjective evaluations, we find that experts assign significantly higher scores to their compatriots in panels without trimming. However, in panels with trimming, this favoritism is generally insignificant.