This paper examines how violence influences the political preferences of an aggrieved constituency that is purportedly represented by militant factions. Using longitudinal public opinion poll micro data of the Palestinian population linked to data on fatalities from the Second Intifada, we find...

We conduct a repeated VCM (voluntary contribution mechanism) experiment using the strategy method and compare contribution behavior in a partner and a stranger matching in both a cold and a hot setting, where the latter differs from the former by allowing participants to revise their strategies...

With the changing political and economic circumstances confronting their countries, regionally concentrated minorities have been facing a strategic problem, important aspects of which can be stylized as a situation in which a minority leader is uncertain about the costs of secession for her...

Mission-driven nonprofit organizations compete for donations through fundraising activities. Such competition can lead to inefficient outcomes, if nonprofits impose externalities on each others' output. This paper studies the sustainability of fundraising coordination agreements, using a...

We analyze the effects of the introduction of gender quotas in candidate lists on the quality of elected politicians, as measured by the average number of years of education. We consider an Italian law which introduced gender quotas in local elections in 1993, and was abolished in 1995. As not...

We investigate the efficiency of Coasean bargaining when restrictions are placed on the set of feasible bargaining outcomes. When property rights are costly to (defend) appropriate, we find that bargaining restrictions may be Pareto superior to unconstrained voluntary exchange. Under cost...

Do elections allow voters to express their policy preferences, with change in government spending patterns following the election of a new leader? How long does it take for the composition of government spending to change following a change in leadership? Or, do significant spending changes...

This paper examines the incentives of voters to appoint legislators with different preferences from their own. The paper adopts an underlying legislative bargaining model proposed by Volden and Wiseman (2007) in which legislators with heterogeneous preferences divide a fixed budget between a...

This paper examines the role of mass media in countering special interest group influence. I use the concentration of campaign contributions from Political Action Committees to proxy for special interests' capture of US Senate candidates from 1980 to 2002, and compare the reaction of voters to...

This paper sheds light on the links between media and political polarization by looking at the introduction of broadcast TV in the US. We provide causal evidence that broadcast TV decreased the ideological extremism of US representatives. We then show that exposure to radio was associated with...