Formal models in political science typically consider actors with differing interests or ideologies, but political actors often have “good faith disagreements” about how to achieve commonly shared goals. We develop a model of a hierarchical political organization in which a principal and an...

Previous research has shown that opportunities for two-sided partner choice in finitely repeated social dilemma games can promote cooperation through a combination of sorting and opportunistic signaling, with late period defections by selfish players causing an end-game decline. How such...

We study the causal relationship between moral values ("ought" statements) and factual beliefs ("is" statements) and show that, contrary to predictions of orthodox Bayesian models, values exert an influence on beliefs. This effect is mediated by prior political leanings and, thus, contributes to...

We study the causal relationship between moral values ("ought" statements) and factual beliefs ("is" statements) and show that, contrary to predictions of orthodox Bayesian models, values exert an influence on beliefs. This effect is mediated by prior political leanings and, thus, contributes to...

This paper considers the problem faced by a political authority that has to design a legislative mechanism that guarantees the selection of policies that are stable, efficient, and inclusive in the sense of strategically protecting minority interests. Experimental studies suggest that some of...

We conduct a laboratory experiment to study how demand for redistribution of income depends on self-interest, insurance motives, and social concerns relating to inequality and efficiency. Our choice environments feature large groups of subjects and real world framing, and differ with respect to...

Participatory programs can reduce the informational and power asymmetries that engender mistrust. These programs, however, cannot include every citizen. Hence, it is important to evaluate if providing information about those programs could affect trust among those who do not participate. We...

A conclave is a voting mechanism in which a committee selects an alternative by voting until a sufficient supermajority is reached. We study experimentally welfare properties of simple three-voter conclaves with privately known preferences over two outcomes and waiting costs. The resulting game...

We report and analyze the results of a series of classroom experiments on the voluntary provision of public goods. Using fixed effect panel regression models we find that cooperation significantly increases when participants are forced to guess the degree of overall cooperation. We also find...