Which decision rule should we use to make a binary collective choice? While voting procedures are applied ubiquitously, they are criticized for being inefficient. Using monetary transfers, efficient choices can be made at the cost of a budget imbalance. Is it optimal to do so? And why are...

Politicians may pander to public opinion and may renounce undertaking beneficial long-term projects. To alleviate this problem, we introduce a triple mechanism involving political information markets, reelection threshold contracts, and democratic elections. An information market is used to...

I investigate the welfare properties of a broad class of electoral systems with endogenous turnout. I find that the welfare ranking of electoral systems depends on the composition of the electorate. If citizens have identical voting costs, then all electoral systems that satisfy certain...