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...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the links between lack of trust in ruling politicians and the functioning of a representative democracy. Within a standard principal-agent model of democracy, we show how lack of trust by citizens as reflected by passive beliefs updating may lead to the...

Constitutional structures shape politicians' behaviour and hence policy outcomes through the di fferent incentive schemes at work. In this paper we analyse these mechanisms in parliamentary and presidential systems. Such a comparison is carried over by analysing how the two systems are able to...

We model voters' gender bias as a prejudice on women's competence coming from a distorted prior. We analyse the effect of this bias in a two-period two-party election in which voters care about both ideology and competence. We find that female politicians are less likely to win office but, when...

In this paper we study whether and how the belief that the gender of politicians affects their competence on different issues influences electoral outcomes depending on the salience of those issues. We first propose a theoretical model of issue-specific gender bias in elections which can...