In The Myth of the Rational Voter Brian Caplan shows that voters entertain systematically biased beliefs on a number of essential issues of economic policy and concludes that this leads democracies to choose bad policies. We introduce the psychological concept of mental models to address voter'...

In “The Myth of the Rational Voter” Brian Caplan shows that voters entertain systematically biased beliefs on a number of essential issues of economic policy and concludes that this leads democracies to choose bad policies. We introduce the psychological concept of mental models to address...

Does information about rampant political corruption increase electoral participation and the support for challenger parties? Democratic theory assumes that offering more information to voters will enhance electoral accountability. However, if there is consistent evidence suggesting that voters...

We theoretically and experimentally study voter behavior in a setting characterized by plurality rule and mandatory voting, where voters choose from three options. We are interested in the occurrence of strategic voting in an environment where Condorcet cycles may occur. In particular, we focus...

This paper analyzes how political accountability affects the incentives of policy makers to learn through experimentation with new policies. It shows that when voters face an inference problem on the competence level of policy makers, reelection concerns reduce experimentation incentives to the...

The rise in polarization in American politics over recent decades has attracted plenty of interest both in academia and in the broader public discussion. However, the connection between affective polarization and individuals’ election expectations is virtually unexplored and poorly understood....

This paper aims to deliver experimental evidence on the dispute between two behavioral models of electoral turnout (Bendor, Diermeier & Ting, APSR 2003; Fowler, JoP 2006). Both models share the idea that the subjects' voting propensities are updated from their past propensities, aspirations and...

If voters are fully rational and have negligible cognition costs, ballot layout should not affect election outcomes. In this paper, we explore deviations from rational voting using quasi-random variation in candidate name placement on ballots from the 2003 California Recall Election. We find...

We study private communication in social networks prior to a majority vote on two alternative policies. Some (or all) agents receive a private imperfect signal about which policy is correct. They can, but need not, recommend a policy to their neighbors in the social network prior to the vote. We...

What is the place of political parties within a democratic system of political economy? Parties are often described as intermediaries that lubricate the political process by facilitating the matching of voter preferences with candidate positions. This line of analysis flows from a bi-planar...