We develop a model in which costly voting in a large two-party election is a sequentially rational choice of strategic, self-interested players who can reward fellow voters by forming stronger ties in a network formation coordination game. The predictions match a variety of stylized facts,...

Over 150 countries allow expatriate citizens to vote in their country of origin. Yet, little is known about their voting behavior and how this is affected by host countries. Using unique micro-data on Chilean expatriates living in Europe, we study how the host country's turnout affects...

German voters in the 2019 European election showed remarkable regional differences in their voting behavior. The Green Party surged in West German districts, while the AfD further consolidated its successes in East Germany. Investigating structural differences at the district level reveals that...

Political discourse has often stoked racial and ethnic divisions, raising the possibility that individuals' self-reported racial and ethnic identities may change in response to an increasingly hostile environment. We shed light on this question by measuring the impacts of local support for...

Economists usually think that rational voters have little incentives to acquire costly information. We present a theoretical model to show that, in contrast to this widely held belief, rational voters acquire considerable amounts of information if media technology is available because then they...

Journalism is widely believed to be crucial for holding elected officials accountable. At the same time economic theory has a hard time providing an instrumental explanation for the existence of "accountability journalism". According to the common Downsian reasoning, rational voters should not...

We show that a large electorate of ignorant voters can succeed in establishing high levels of electoral accountability. In our model an incumbent politician is confronted with a large number of voters who receive very noisy signals about her performance. We find that the accountability problem...

We present an electoral theory on the public provision of local public goods to an imperfectly informed electorate. We show that electoral incentives lead to greater spending if the electorate is not well informed. A more informed electorate induces candidates to target funds only to specific...