The top-two primary recently approved in states like Washington, California, and Alaska eliminates the closed party primaries and creates instead a single ballot in which the first and second place winners pass to the general election. We compare the electoral consequences of the top-two primary...

We analyze the problem of a jury choosing the winner from a set of agents when the identity of the deserving winner is common knowledge amongst the jurors but each juror is biased in favor of one different agent. We propose a simple and natural mechanism that implements the socially optimal rule...

A high court has to decide whether a law is constitutional, un- constitutional, or interpretable. The voting system is runoff. Runoff voting systems can be interpreted both, as social choice functions or as mechanisms. It is known that, for universal domains of preferences, runoff voting systems...

We analyze the problem of choosing the w contestants who will win a competition within a group of n  w competitors when all jurors commonly observe who the w best contestants are, but they may be biased. We study conditions on the configuration of the jury so that it is possible to induce the...

The top-two primary is the new primary system passed in several states of the US that creates a single ballot in which the top two vote getters pass to the general election. Primary elections induce a sequential game with three stages: the candidate-entry stage, the primary election stage, and...

A jury has to choose the winner of a contest. There exists a deserving winner, whose identity is common knowledge among the jurors, but not known by the planner. Jurors may be biased in favor (friend) or against (enemy) some contestants. We study conditions on the confi?guration of the jury so...

In this article, a two-party contest where candidates allocate their campaign resources strategically between two salient issues is studied. The analysis aims to determine the circumstances under which there is issue convergence (both parties emphasizing the same issue) or issue divergence...

A jury has to decide the winner of a competition among a group of contestants. All members of the jury know who the deserving winner is, but this contestant is unknown to the planner. The social optimum is that the jury select the deserving winner. Each individual juror may be biased in favor...