This paper models a purely informational mechanism behind the incumbency advantage. In a two-period electoral campaign with two policy issues, a specialized incumbent and an unspecialized, but possibly more competent challenger compete for election by voters who are heterogeneously informed...

This paper models a purely informational mechanism behind the incumbency advantage. In a two-period electoral campaign with two policy issues, a specialized incumbent and an unspecialized, but possibly more competent challenger compete for election by voters who are heterogeneously informed...

This paper models a purely informational mechanism behind the incumbency advantage. In a two-period electoral campaign with two policy issues, a specialized incumbent and an unspecialized, but possibly more competent challenger compete for election by voters who are heterogeneously informed...

This paper proposes a behavioral model of social learning that unies various forms of inferential reasoning in one hierarchy of types. Iterated best responses that are based on uninformative level-0 play lead to the following of the private information (level-1), to the following of the majority...

We experimentally investigate the fundamental element of the level-k model of reasoning, the level-0 actions and beliefs. We use data from a novel experimental design that allows us to obtain incentivised written accounts of individuals' reasoning. In particular, these accounts allow to infer...

We investigate the relevance of conditional reasoning and belief formation for the occurrence of the winner’s curse with the help of two experimental manipulations. First, we compare results from a very simple common-value auction game with results from a transformed version of this game that...

This paper compares the ability to select the efficient policy of a parliamentary and a presidential constitutional setup. In order to do it we build a dynamic theoretical model with asymmetric information that succeeds in addressing both the politicians accountability and the competence...

This paper studies the effect of social comparison on risk taking behavior. We assume that decision makers evaluate consequences of their choices not only as variations with respect to their economic status but also as variations with respect to the status of their peers. We test experimentally...

In the theory of psychological games it is assumed that players' preferences on material consequences depend on endogenous beliefs. Most of the applications of this theoretical framework assume that the psychological utility functions representing such preferences are common knowledge. But this...

In this paper we propose a model with uncertainty in which strategic voters vote, under poportional rule, for a Parliament and parties bargain to form a government. We prove that only consensus government form and only extreme parties take votes.