This article reports results from an economic experiment that investigates to what extent voters punish corruption and waste in elections. While both are responsible for a loss of welfare for voters, they are not necessarily perceived as equally immoral. The empirical literature in political...

Although pre-electoral political manipulation of the budget --- the political budget cycle (PBC) --- has been long investigated by scholars, empirical findings are mixed at best. This is partly because of the non-random nature of election timing. There also exist ongoing debates over how the...

This paper investigates the effects of different prize structures on the effort choices of participants in two-stage elimination contests. A format with a single prize is shown to maximize total effort over both stages, but induces low effort in stage 1 and high effort in stage 2. By contrast, a...

This paper is a contribution to the worldwide media reform movement, which is seeking ways to reverse the decline of public interest journalism, especially the in-depth coverage of political issues that is needed for healthy democracies. Several prominent thinkers are advocating similar reforms,...