This paper is devoted to the analysis of all constitutions equipped with electoral systems involving two step procedures. First, one candidate is elected in every jurisdiction by the electors in that jurisdiction, according to some aggregation procedure. Second, another aggregation procedure...

Politics must tackle multiple issues at once. In a first-best world, political competition constrains parties to prioritize issues according to the voters' true concerns. In the real world, the opposite also happens: parties manipulate voter priorities by emphasizing issues selectively during...

We propose a smooth multibidding mechanism for environments where a group of agents have to choose one out of several projects (possibly with the help of a social planner). Our proposal is related to the multibidding mechanism (Pérez-Castrillo and Wettstein, 2002) but it is "smoother" in the...

We study the social, demographic and economic origins of social security. The data for the U.S. and for a cross section of countries suggest that urbanization and industrializa- tion are associated with the rise of social insurance. We describe an OLG model in which demographics, technology, and...

We analyze a unidimensional model of two-candidate electoral competition where voters have im- perfect information about the candidates' policy proposals, that is, voters cannot observe the exact policy proposals of the candidates but only which candidate offers the most leftist/rightist...

We analyze the incentives for cooperation of three players differing in their efficiency of effort in a contest game. We concentrate on the non-cooperative bargaining foundation of coalition formation, and therefore, we adopt a two-stage model. In the first stage, individuals form coalitions...

We present a model of cooperative production in which rational agents might carry out sabotage activities that decrease output. We provide necessary and su cient conditions for the existence of a Nash equilibrium without sabotage. It is shown that the absence of sabotage in equilibrium depends...

This paper proposes an argument that explains incumbency advantage with- out recurring to the collective irresponsibility of legislatures. For that purpose, we exploit the informational value of incumbency: incumbency confers voters informa- ion about governing politicians not available from...

We extend the model of collective action in which groups compete for a budged by endogenizing the group platform, namely the specific mixture of public/private good and the distribution of the private good to group members which can be uniform or performance-based. While the group-optimal...

We propose a theoretical model to explain empirical regularities related to the curse of natural resources. This is an explicitly political model which emphasizes the behavior and incentives of politicians. We extend the standard voting model to give voters political control beyond the...