We investigate how individuals think groups should aggregate members' ordinal preferences - that is, how they interpret "the will of the people." In an experiment, we elicit revealed attitudes toward ordinal preference aggregation and classify subjects according to the rules they apparently...

We investigate the nature of social preferences when a decision maker's information is limited to group members' ordinal rankings. By studying choices made on behalf of others, we identify social choice rules that embody the normative values decision makers implicitly favor. Few people are...

Framing effects and bounded rationality imply that election campaigns may be an important determinant of election outcomes. This paper uses a two-party setting and simple game theoretic models to analyse the strategic interaction between the parties' campaign decisions. Alternations of power...

Approval voting allows voters to support as many candidates as they wish. One advantage of the method is that voters have weak or no incentives to vote insincerely. However, the exact meaning of this statement depends on how the voters' preferences over candidates are extended to sets. We show...

This paper focuses on fertility choices in Brazil, a country where soap operas (novelas) portray families that are much smaller than in reality, to study the effects of television on individual behavior. Using Census data for the period 1970-1991, the paper finds that women living in areas...

The make-or-buy decision is analyzed in a simple two-task principal-agent model. There is a cost-saving/quality tradeoff in effort provision. The principal faces a dichotomous choice between weak ("make") and strong ("buy") cost-saving incentives for the agent; the dichotomy is due to an...