We present a model of political selection in which voters elect a president from a set of candidates. We assume that some of the candidates are benevolent and that all voters prefer a benevolent president, i.e. a president who serves the public interest. Yet, political selection may fail in our...

Some people have a concern for a fair distribution of incomes while others do not. Does such a concern matter for majority voting on redistribution? Fairness preferences are relevant for redistribution outcomes only if fair-minded voters are pivotal. Pivotality, in turn, depends on the structure...

Political parties can be vehicles for economic and social development in poor countries. They can also serve as rent seeking instruments. Uncovering how parties function is therefore key to establishing the preconditions for good governance. The paper discusses when and why clientelism on the...

We explore the political acceptance of taxation in commodity markets. Participants in our experiment earn incomes by trading and must collectively choose one of two tax regimes to raise a given tax revenue. A "uniform tax" (UT) imposes the same tax rate on all markets and is fair in that it...

The quality of political candidates often depends on the current state of the world, for example because their personal characteristics are more valuable in some situations than in others. We explore the implications of state-dependent candidate quality in a model of electoral competition where...

Partisan voters are optimistic about electoral outcomes: their estimates of the probability of electoral success for their party or candidate are substantially higher than the average among the electorate. This has large potential implications for political bargaining. Optimism about future...

We investigate experimentally the effects of corrupt experts on information aggregation in committees. We find that non-experts are significantly less likely to delegate through abstention when there is a probability that experts are corrupt. Such decreased abstention, when the probability of...

The ability of groups to implement efficiency-enhancing institutions is emerging as a central theme of research in economics. This paper explores voting on a scheme of intergroup competition which facilitates cooperation in a social dilemma situation. Experimental results show that the...

A democratic society is considered where the voters, but not the politicians, are uncertain about how the economy works. The parties therefore have a strategic motive to misinform the voters. Will the voters learn how the economy works and will the policy decisions be efficient? It turns out...

Why do both left and right political parties almost always propose progressive income taxation schemes in political competition? Analysis of this problem has been hindered by the two-dimensionality of the issue space. To give parties a choice over a domain which contains both progressive and...