In this work we set out to examine how the effective separation of powers in a political system, secures increased accountability and reduces the incentives of agents to try to corrupt officials. We summarize the main results of the existing literature that examines both these relationships and...

This paper has the objective of showing that identity based voting will lead to improvements in household welfare through increased access to welfare programs. Using newly available data from rural India, we establish that identity based voting will lead to enhanced participation in welfare...

The expression "cash-for-votes" describes a form of vote buying in which candidates for office pay individuals in exchange for their votes. That practice undermines the functioning of democracy but is pervasive in many parts of the world, especially in the Global South. We discuss estimates of...

We study how seemingly benign changes to voting costs affect electoral turnout, exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in the assignment of polling places in Munich (Germany). Using an event study design, we find that polling place relocations cause a persistent shift from in-person to mail-in...

Numerous cities across the U.S. have recently switched to ranked choice voting in their local mayoral elections. Proponents argue that, by allowing voters to fully express their preferences over the candidates, voter satisfaction and, ultimately, turnout will improve. Opponents are concerned...

Altruistic punishment is a fundamental driver for cooperation in human interactions. In this paper, we expand our understanding of this form of costly punishment to help explain a puzzle of voting behavior: why do people who are indifferent between two potential policy outcomes of an election...

We study legislative bargaining with two person teams versus individuals. Teams pass minimum winning coalitions significantly more often than individuals, meeting or beating the demanding truth wins criteria. Teams have more proposer power, coming significantly closer to the very unequal payoffs...

Blockchain applications are increasingly experimenting with novel governance mechanisms that address issues that are important for their community: resistance to voter fraud in the form a Sybil attack; resistance to the formation of a plutocracy within the community; and, the ability to express...

This paper studies the advantages that a coalition of agents obtains by forming a voting bloc to pool their votes and cast them all together. We identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for an agent to benefit from the formation of the voting bloc, both if the agent is a member of the...

We consider voting rules on a multidimensional policy space for a continuum of voters with elliptic preferences. Assuming continuity, gamma -strategy-proofnessmeaning that coalitions of size smaller or equal to a small number gamma cannot manipulateand unanimity, we show that such rules are...