In the 40’s and early 50’ two decision theories were proposed and have since dominated the sceneof the fascinating field of decision-making. In 1944 – when von Neumann and Morgenstern showedthat if preferences are consistent with a set of axioms then it is possible to represent these...

In multi-party democracies, several parties usually have to join together in coalitionto form government. Many aspects of that process have been fairly fully investigated,others less so. Among the latter is the timing of the formation and announcement ofcoalitions.1While the dominant popular...

We consider a median voter model with uncertainty about how theeconomy functions. The distribution of income is exogenously given andthe provision of a public good is ¯nanced through a proportional tax.Voters and politicians do not know the true production function for thepublic good, but by...

A significant body of experimental evidence documents systematic violations of the transitivityaxiom of expected utility theory in a manner consistent with regret theory. In a recent paper Starmerand Sugden (in press) test a variety of alternative explanations of this evidence, including...

The measurement of voting power plays a useful role in the investigation of structural properties of collective decision-making rules which can be modelled as a simple (voting) game. Such rules can be found in legislative bodies, committees, and a variety of organizations.(...)

We construct a model of redistributive politics where the central government is opportunistic and uses its discretion to make transfers to state governments on the basis of political considerations. These considerations are the alignment between the incumbent parties at the central and state...

Financial Secretary Stephen Timms considers Labour’s response to the financial crisis and looks forward to what his party is doing to secure the recovery.[...]

This paper develops an approach to political equilibrium in a two-party setting. The approach characterizes political resource allocationas trading o¤ the utility of core party supporters and swing voters,i.e. those who are not attached to either party. The model has threestages. First parties...

A key issue in political economy concerns the accountability structures put in place to select public officials. While the principle that legislators are to be elected is now a defining feature of modern democracies, there are some offices where a plurality of selection methods survive. A key...

We present a simple theory of the quality (competence and honesty) of elected officials. Our theoryoffers three main insights. Low-quality citizens have a ‘comparative advantage’ in pursuing electiveoffice, because their market wages are lower than those of high-quality citizens...