This paper analyzes a non-smooth model of probabilistic voting with two parties and a broad family of other-regarding behavior, including fairness and quasi-maximin preferences, income-dependent altruism, and inequity aversion. The paper provides conditions for equilibrium existence and...

What role do elections play in nondemocracies? In this paper, we offer an empirical test of a popular idea that authoritarian governments use elections to engineer overwhelming victories thus deterring potential opposition from challenging the regime. Using the data from the Russian...

We develop a model of strategic information transmission from an expert with informational superiority to decision makers who vote on a proposal. We show that an expert's simple cheap talk strategy can be surprisingly effective in persuading decision makers by polarizing or unifying their...

We compare procurement contracts where the procurer is either a public agent or a private corporation. Using algorithmic data reading and textual analysis on a rich dataset of con- tracts for a standardized product and service from a single provider, we find that public contracts feature more...

This paper endogenizes policymaking procedures in a multilateral bargaining framework. A procedure specifies players' proposal power in bargaining over one-dimensional policies. In procedural bargaining players internalize the procedures' effects on subsequent policy bargaining. In policy...

International environmental agreements (IEAs) are increasingly important in a globalized economy. The aim of our paper is study the effect of political pressure groups-lobbies- on the size and stability of IEAs. To this purpose we use the framework of two-level games to explain how national...

We study a two-period dynamic principal agent model in which two agents with different unobservable abilities compete in a contest for a single prize. A risk-neutral principal can affect the outcome of the contest by dividing a given budget between agents in each period and her net payoff...

We develop a model of strategic information transmission from an outside expert with informational superiority to a group of people who make a decision by voting on a proposal. An outside expert who observes the qualities of a proposal sends a cheap talk message to decision makers with limited...

In this paper, we study full implementation problem by mechanisms that allow delay. The delay on the equilibrium path may be zero, infinitesimally small or a fixed positive number. In all these three cases, implementable rules are characterized by a monotonicity-like condition alone, including...