We study the implications of state dependent costs of policy mismatch in political agency models where politicians have reputational concerns over their preferences and the "good'' politician shares the same objectives of the voters. We find that state-dependent costs can make pandering...

As concerns about reform fatigue in lower- and middle-income countries have become more widespread, so has the search for ways of boosting support for market-oriented reforms. While the effects of political institutions on reform results have been extensively analyzed, there has been relatively...

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...

In this note, we characterize the equilibria of the standard pivotal-voter participation game between two groups of voters of asymmetric sizes, as originally proposed by Palfrey and Rosenthal [1983. A strategic calculus of voting. Public Choice. 41, 7-53]

A crucial aspect behind rational decision making in an economic game is the availability of complete information. Democratic elections can be modelled as one such game, where the electorate and candidates are competing players. In the democratic game, the electorate suffers from asymmetry of...

In this article I analyze a model of interest group influence on legislative voting through information transmission. The model shows how interest groups may manipulate voting coalitions to their advantage by crafting different messages to target different winning coalitions. Furthermore, if...

We set up a model of elections or referendums with two alternatives to study how voter turnout and election outcomes are affected by the publication of exit polls on election day. We find that the introduction of an exit poll influences the incentive to vote both before and after the poll is...

In this paper we examine the impact of tax contracts as a novel institution on elections, policies, and welfare. We consider a political game in which three parties compete to form the government. Parties have policy preferences about the level of public-good provision and benefit from perks...

Informed voters are believed to be necessary for the well-functioning of elections. However, the puzzle is raised: Why are voters and politicians becoming more polarized despite the increased availability of information? We consider an election with policy-motivated candidates and partially...

The matter studied here is how, and with what implications, people may decide that they do not want to be let into secrets that concern them. They could get the information at no cost but they refuse to know. The reasoning is framed in terms of principals and agents, with the principals assumed...