Previous results on political cycles as a signal of competency assumed that opportunism was common knowledge. If opportunism is not common knowledge, there may be a partially pooling equilibrium where cycles indicate opportunism rather than competency. Insofar as more discretionality increases...

This paper examines the political economy of redistribution when voters have asymmetric information about the redistributive preferences of politicians and the latter cannot make credible policy commitments. The candidates in each party are endogenously selected by a process of Nash Bargaining...

We investigate whether private information about citizens'' competence in political office can be revealed by their entry and campaign expenditure decisions. We find that this depends on whether voters and candidates have common or conflicting interests; only in the former case can entry be...