We consider a median voter model with uncertainty about how theeconomy functions. The distribution of income is exogenously given andthe provision of a public good is ¯nanced through a proportional tax.Voters and politicians do not know the true production function for thepublic good, but by...

We construct a model of redistributive politics where the central government is opportunistic and uses its discretion to make transfers to state governments on the basis of political considerations. These considerations are the alignment between the incumbent parties at the central and state...

Recent developments in voting theory show that Condorcet profiles embedded in electoratesare responsible for conflicts between pairwise voting methods and for reversals ofrankings under positional methods whenever candidates are dropped or added. Because ofthe strong symmetry of the rankings of...

This paper studies the advantages that a coalition of agents obtains by forming a voting bloc to pool their votes and cast them all together. We identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for an agent to benefit from the formation of the voting bloc, both if the agent is a member of the...

We propose a simple infinite horizon of repeated elections with two candidates. Furthermore we suppose that the government policy presents some degree of inertia, i.e. a new government cannot completely change the policy implemented by the incumbent. When the policy inertia is strong enough, no...

Does a disadvantaged candidate always choose an extremist program? When does a less competent candidate have an incentive to move to extreme positions in order to differentiate himself from the more competent candidate? If the answer to these questions were positive, as suggested in recent work...

Do governments increase public employment in election years? This paper investigates this question by using data from Sweden and Finland, two countries that are similar in many respects but in which local elections are held at different points in time. We can thereby separate an election effect...

We study the role of beauty in politics. For the first time, focus is put on differences in how women and men evaluate female and male candidates and how different candidate traits relate to success in real and hypothetical elections. We have collected 16,218 assessments by 2,772 respondents of...

Die vorliegende Studie zeigt auf Basis der IW-Personenbefragung 2024, dass rund 62 Prozent der Deutschen die Wahl des Europäischen Parlaments für wichtig halten. Dies ist das Ergebnis unter rund 5.200 Befragten. Der Anteil liegt damit in etwa so hoch wie die Wahlbeteiligung im Jahr 2019. Die...

We develop a dynamic model of political competition. Each party has a policymotivated ideological wing and an office-motivated opportunistic wing. A blockade arises if inner-party conflict stops policy implementation. We use this model to study whether early elections should be used to overcome...