We suggest a model of electoral competition between two parties which is extended by a third player : mass media. The classical one-dimensional competition model is changed by introducing an issue-specific sensibility-coefficient and by allowing for non-voting. The winner is selected by majority...

We study the informational effectiveness of electoral campaigns. Voters may not think about all political issues and have incomplete information with regard to political positions of candidates. Nevertheless, we show that if candidates are allowed to microtarget voters with messages then...

We study a model of elections in non-majoritarian systems that captures the link between competition in policies and competition in campaign spending. We argue that the overall competitiveness of the political arena depends both on the endogenous number of parties contesting the election and the...

We present a model of elections in which interest group donations allow candidates to shift policy positions. We show that if donations were prohibited, then a unique equilibrium regarding the platform choices of candidates would exist. Our game with financing of political campaigns exhibits two...

We present a model of elections in which interest group donations allow candidates to shift policy positions. We show that if donations were prohibited, then a unique equilibrium regarding the position choices of candidates would exist. With unrestricted financing of political campaigns two...

This paper utilizes a simple model of redistributive politics with voter abstention to analyze the impact of nonpartisan ‘get-out-the-vote’ efforts on policy outcomes. Although such efforts are often promoted on the grounds that they provide the social benefit of increasing participation in...

We characterize the symmetric Nash equilibria of the symmetric voter participation game with complete information introduced by Palfrey and Rosenthal (1983). Our results confirm their conjecture on the existence, multiplicity, and comparative statics of such equilibria and yield more precise...

We experimentally study behavior in a simple voting game where players have private information about their preferences. With random matching, subjects overwhelmingly follow the dominant strategy to exaggerate their preferences, which leads to inefficiency. We analyze an exogenous linking...

Using data from an experiment by Forsythe, Myerson, Rietz, and Weber (1993), designed for a different purpose, we test the "standard theory" that players have preferences only over their own mentary payoffs and that play will be in (evolutionary stable) equilibrium. In the experiment each...

We study both theoretically and experimentally the set of Nash equilibria of a classical one-dimensional election game with two candidates. These candidates are interested in power and ideology, but their weights on these two motives are not necessarily identical. Apart from obtaining the well...