How should we make value judgments about wealth inequality? Harsanyi (1953) proposes to take an individual who evaluates her well-being by expected utility and ask her to evaluate the wealth possibilities ex-ante (i.e. before she finds her place in society, i.e., under the "veil of ignorance" of...

I propose a game-theoretic model of costly voting that predicts signi…cant turnout rates even when the electorate is arbitrarily large. The model has two key features that jointly drive the result: (i) some agents are altruistic (or ethical), (ii) among the agents who prefer any given...

A duty to vote may be interpreted narrowly as no more than an obligation to cast one’s ballot, supporting a party or candidate in one’s own interest exclusively or, if one so pleases, with some regard for the community as a whole. Alternatively, a duty to vote may be interpreted...

I propose a game-theoretic model of costly voting that predicts significant turnout rates even when the electorate is arbitrarily large. The model has two key features that jointly drive the result: (i) some agents are altruistic (or ethical), (ii) among the agents who prefer any given...

We consider collective choice from two alternatives. Ex-ante, each agent is uncertain about which alternative she prefers, and may be uncertain about the intensity of her preferences. An environment is given by a probability distribution over utility vectors that is symmetric across agents and...

This paper aims to the analysis of the rules electoral effects on fiscal policy, respect to the Italian case: in fact Italy, since 1861 until nowadays, modified several times its electoral system, switching from the majoritarian to the proportional system. In particular here we focus on the...

Previous empirical studies analysing the effect of electoral systems on growth lack unanimous answers as they miss-specify mixed systems in the empirical setting, that is, they neglect to consider the proportionality degree of mixed electoral systems. This work supplies the missing answers by...