The upcoming demographic crises in Germany demands fundamental reforms of the pension system. In a democracy, reforms are, however, only feasible when they are supported by the majority of the electorate. To determine whether the majority is in favor of reforms of the pension system, we...

In this paper the authors endogenize the number and characteristics of lobbies in a citizen-candidate model of representative democracy where citizens can lobby an elected policy-maker. They find that lobbying always matters. That is, lobbying always effects equilibrium policy outcomes....

This paper investigates the merits of different democratic institutions when politics is uni-dimensional, there is uncertainty both about the preferences of the future electorate and the future polarization of political parties, and politicians have better information about the state of the...