voters' capacity to identify and empower well-suited politicians. In our model, candidates are heterogeneous in two … concentration of power in the hands of the election winner is optimal if and only if the conflict of interest is small. …

voters' capacity to identify and empower competent politicians. In our model, candidates are privately informed about their … motivation. In particular, full concentration of power is desirable if and only if politicians are mostly welfare-oriented. The …

have a down-up characteristic. We show that voters cannot motivate politicians to invest in down-up policies by their … macroeconomic developments. Finally, we comment on practical issues when such contracts are used in election races …

collusion between media and politicians change if two pieces of information about the politician are available: media … honest politicians from dishonest ones more often than if they were relying on media information only; ii) collusion is … citizens. -- Mass Media ; Corruption ; Selection and Discipline of Politicians …

In this paper we study the functioning of representative democracy when politicians are better informed than the …

in terms of how it allows publication of intermediate election results including turnout and candidates' vote shares … during an election day. Using a pivotal costly voting model of elections in which voters have privately observed preferences …