We study the role of inter-group differences in the emergence of conflict. In our setting, two groups compete for the right to allocate society’s resources, and we allow for costly inter-group mobility. The winning group offers an allocation, that the opposition can either accept, or reject...

Poor communities sometimes resist private investment and destroy economic surplus even if the government has the willingness and ability to redistribute. We interpret such acts of resistance as demands for redistribution: destruction contains credible information about how affected groups value...

We present a model of political campaigning where a candidate chooses between promoting oneself (positive campaign) or attacking the rival (negative campaign). The media validates the claims made by candidates, and the quality of a candidate is not fully revealed unless there is a debate about...

We consider a persuasion game where multiple experts with potentially conflicting self-interests attempt to persuade a decision-maker, say, a judge. The judge prefers to take an action that is most appropriate given the true state of the world but the experts' preferences over the actions are...

We consider a persuasion game between a decision-maker and a panel of biased experts. The decision-maker prefers to take an action in [0, 1] that matches the underlying state but relies on the experts to learn the state. Each expert has his `ideal` action or `agenda` and may conceal unfavorable...

We provide a simple condition that is both necessary and sufficient for aggregation of private information in large elections where all voters have the same preference. In some states of the world, all voters prefer A; and in other states, all voters prefer B. Each voter draws a private signal...

We report on an experiment comparing compulsory and voluntary voting institutions in a voting game with common preferences. Rational choice theory predicts sharp differences in voter behavior between these two institutions. If voting is compulsory, then voters may find it rational to vote...

We report on an experiment comparing compulsory and voluntary voting mechanisms. Theory predicts that these different mechanisms have different implications both for the sincerity of the voting decisions and for the participation decisions of voters, and we find strong support for these...

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