When voting takes place in democratic institutions, we find (either explicitly or implicitly) that there is an agenda setter or a formateur. Such players are uniquely able to make substantive proposals for given topics. Their statuses remain intact even after rejection of proposals, but they...

The launch of a public project requires support from enough members of a group. Members (players) are differently important for the project and have different cost/benefit relations. There are players who profit and players who suffer from the launch of the project. Examples are the Kyoto...

Governments often provide their citizens with goods and services that are also supplied in markets: education, housing, nutritional assistance, etc. We analyze the political economy of the public provision of private goods when individuals care about their social image. We show that image...

Theories about unique equilibrium selection are often rejected in experimental investigations. We drop the idea of selecting a single prominent equilibrium but suggest the coexistence of different beliefs about "appropriate" equilibrium or non-equilibrium play. Our main selection criterion is...

In Binary Threshold Public Good (BTPG) games n players contribute or not to the production of a public good which is produced if and only if there are at least k contributors. The BTPG games with the highest (k=n) and the lowest (k=1) threshold are the Stag Hunt game and the Volunteer's Dilemma....

We argue that a long-run cultural persistence of right-wing ideology can explain the recent rise of right-wing populism. Shifts in the supply of party platforms can interact with this existing demand, and give rise to patterns of historical persistence. We study the context of Germany in the...

Do sanctions strengthen the targeted regime? I analyze the 2014 imposition of Western sanctions on Russia and its impact on voting. The US and the EU introduced targeted measures against Russian entities and individuals related to Putin's regime. Using polling station-level data I investigate...

The common use of majority rule in group decision making is puzzling. In theory, it inequitably favors the proposer, and paradoxically, it disadvantages voters further if they are inequity averse. In practice, however, outcomes are equitable. The present paper analyzes data from a novel...

Social media are becoming increasingly important in our society and change the way people communicate, how they acquire information, and how they form beliefs. Experts are concerned that the rise of social media may make interaction and information exchange among like-minded individuals more...

This paper develops a theory in which heterogeneity in political preferences produces a partisan disagreement about objective facts. A political decision involving both idiosyncratic preferences and scientific knowledge is considered. Voters form motivated beliefs in order to improve their...