We examine the consequences of vote buying, assuming this practice were allowed and free of stigma. Two parties competing in a binary election may purchase votes in a sequential bidding game via up-front binding payments and/or campaign promises (platforms) that are contingent upon the outcome...

Theories in political economy depend critically on assumptions about motivations of politicians. Our analysis starts from the premise that politicians, like other economic agents, are rational individuals who make career decisions by comparing the expected returns of alternative choices. The...

We examine the consequences of lobbying and vote buying, assuming this practice were allowed and free of stigma. Two .lobbyists. compete for the votes of legislators by oÞering up-front payments to the legislators in exchange for their votes. We analyze how the lobbyists.budget constraints and...

We examine the consequences of vote buying, assuming this practice were al-lowed and free of stigma. Two parties compete in a binary election and may purchase votes in a sequential bidding game via up-front binding payments and/or campaign promises (platforms) that are contingent upon the...

We present a model of participation in elections in small networks, in which citizens suÞer from cross-pressures if voting against the alternative preferred by some of their social contacts. We analyze how the existence of cross-pressures may shape voting decisions, and so, political outcomes;...

The property of an allocation rule to be implementable in dominant strategies by a unique payment scheme is called revenue equivalence. In this paper we give a characterization of revenue equivalence based on a graph theoretic interpretation of the incentive compatibility constraints. The...