The selection of political representatives depends on the political system. Principals, such as voters or districts, may benefit by strategically electing representatives different from themselves. While a status-quo biased delegate may be a better negotiator, an enthusiastic representative has...

This paper shows that peer pressure may lead to dynamic convergence to a norm that is skewed with respect to preferences in society, yet is endogenously upheld by the population. Moreover, a skewed norm will often be more sustainable than a representative norm. This may explain the skewness of...

This paper studies experimentally how the endogeneity of sanctioning institutions affects the severity of punishment in social dilemmas. We allow individuals to vote on the introduction of third-party-administered sanctions, and compare situations in which the adoption of this institution is...

In this paper we provide a political game where agents decide whether to become legislators or politicians. Legislators determine the political institutions constraining politicians' behavior and politicians compete for gaining the power to make decisions about the level of the public good. We...

We propose three mechanisms to reach a compromise between two opposite parties that must choose one out of a set of candidates and operate under full information. All three mechanisms weakly implement the Unanimity Compromise Set. They all rely on the use of some Rule of k Names, whereby one of...

Representative democracy consists of a chain of delegation from voters to the executive and a corresponding chain of accountability, with some questions (particularly constitutional questions) reserved for popular vote. This structure reflects the high transaction costs of coordinating...

This paper studies experimentally how the endogeneity of sanctioning institutions affects the severity of punishment in social dilemmas. We allow individuals to vote on the introduction of third-party-administered sanctions, and compare situations in which the adoption of this institution is...

I investigate if, how, and why the effect of a contribution rule in a public goods game depends on how it is implemented: endogenously chosen or externally imposed. The rule prescribes full contributions to the public good backed by a nondeterrent sanction for those who do not comply. My...

This paper reports the results of a public good experiment with voting. The standard game in which subjects decide simultaneously on their contributions to a public good is extended by a second stage. In this stage, subjects can express agreement or disagreement with the contributions of their...

Zhang and Zhou (2016) use the concept of Bayesian persuasion due to Kamenica and Gentzkow (2011) to analyze information disclosure in a contest with one-sided asymmetric information. They show that an effort-maximizing designer can manipulate information disclosure to increase expected efforts...