We examine a model in which the public is unsure about the competence of a politician, and whether they are concerned about the long-term consequences of their decisions (statesman) or about the public’s opinion concerning their competence and preferences (populist). The main finding suggests...

Democratic processes may not take the welfare of future generations sufficiently into account and thus may not achieve sustainability. We show that the dual democratic mechanism – rejection/support rewards (RSRs) for politicians and elections – can achieve sustainability. RSRs stipulate that...

As the performance of long-term projects is not observable in the short run politicians may pander to public opinion. To solve this problem, we propose a triple mechanism involving political information markets, reelection threshold contracts, and democratic elections. An information market is...

We examine the consequences when the public is unsure about the ability of governments to foresee the effects of decisions. Governments with much information should invest either immediately or never. Governments that are not well informed should wait for better information. But since...

We consider a model with a politician facing a multi-task problem while in office. The re-election mechanism distorts the allocation of effort in favour of tasks whose outcomes can be measured more precisely than others. We show that a combination of elections and incentive contracts can...

In this paper we introduce vote-share contracts. Such contracts contain a vote-share threshold that incumbents must reach in order to be reelected. In a simple model, we illustrate the working of vote-share contracts. Such vote-share contracts curb socially detrimental incumbency advantages by...

In this Paper we examine the possibilities a principal in a public organization has to motivate agents for productivity improvements where standard stick and carrot incentives cannot be used. The principal’s only incentive device is a reallocation of budgets and tasks across agents depending...

When politicians are provided with insufficient incentives by the democratic election mechanism, we show that social welfare can be improved by threshold contracts. A threshold incentive contract stipulates a performance level which a politican must reach in order to have the right to stand for...

Politicians may pander to public opinion and may renounce undertaking beneficial long-term projects. To alleviate this problem, we introduce a triple mechanism involving political information markets, reelection threshold contracts, and democratic elections. An information market is used to...

Politicians tend to push the amount of public debt beyond socially desirable levels in order to increase their reelection chances. We develop a model that provides a new explanation for this behavior: office holders undertake debt-financed public projects, but postpone the timing of part of the...