Showing 1 - 10 of 158
We compare single round vs runoff elections under plurality rule, allowing for partly endogenous party formation. Under runoff elections, the number of political candidates is larger, but the influence of extremist voters on equilibrium policy and hence policy volatility are smaller, because the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013076816
We develop a theory of endogenous political entrenchment in a simple two-party dynamic model of income redistribution with probabilistic voting. A partially self-interested left-wing party may implement (entrenchment) policies reducing the income of its own constituency, the lower class, in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013107694
This paper studies the assignment of decision makers to two committees that make decisions by a simple majority rule. There is an even number of decision makers at each of various skill levels and each committee has an odd number of members. Surprisingly, even with the symmetric assumptions in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013123565
It is widely believed that politicians allocate public resources in ways to maximize political gains. But what is less clear is whether this comes at a cost to welfare; and if so, whether alternative electoral rules can help reduce these costs. In this paper, we address both of these questions by...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013001344
In this article, we empirically study the survival of the ruling party in parliamentary democracies using a hazard rate model. We define survival of a crisis as being successful in a critical vote in the parliament. We develop a general probabilistic model of political crises and test it...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012868829
We consider a framework where the optimal decision rule determining the collective choice depends in a simple way on the decision makers' posterior probabilities of a particular state of nature. Nevertheless, voting is generally an inefficient way to make collective choices and this paper sheds...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013039595
We determine the scoring rule that is most likely to select a high-ability candidate. A major result is that neither the widely used plurality rule nor the inverse-plurality rule are ever optimal, and that the Borda rule is hardly ever optimal. Furthermore, we show that only the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012929073
In this paper, we focus on the effect of belonging to one or more minority groups on the probability of success in … woman or a Muslim decreases the chances of electoral success, candidates who belong to two minority groups have an advantage … in the race. In some cases of candidates belonging to two minority groups, their chances of success are not only higher …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012925499
This paper develops a theoretical framework that makes predictions on (a) the conditions under which a populist party decides to run and the policy position it takes and (b) voters' response under different electoral systems. We test these predictions using data on Italian municipal elections...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013315222
We propose a theoretical framework to study the determinants of ethnic and religious identity along two distinct motivational processes which have been proposed in the social sciences: cultural conformity and cultural distinction. Under cultural conformity, ethnic identity is reduced by...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013136952