A firm may induce voters or elected politicians to support a policy it favors by suggesting that it is more likely to invest in a district whose voters or representatives support the policy. In equilibrium, no one vote may be decisive, and the policy may gain strong support though the majority...

In their seminal work, The Calculus of Consent (1962), Buchanan and Tullock develop a decision model which embodies fundamental relation­ships relevant to institutional choices. However, the Buchanan-Tullock model remains "general," thus inviting others to specify details and to develop...

This paper addresses the impact information has on electoral accountability in a legislative system based on seniority using laboratory experiments. A purely rational choice perspective of a simple voting environment implies that information is inconsequential when seniority is exceptionally...

Whether individuals vote strategically is one of the most important questions at the intersection of economics and political science. Exploiting a flaw in the German electoral system by which a party may gain seats by receiving fewer votes, this paper documents patterns of strategic voting in a...

This paper formulates a simple mathematical framework for the selection of an optimum "relative unanimity” collective decision rule. The approach is first to identify the benefits of moving from a rule of simple majority towards a rule of full unanimity. Then, the costs of moving from simple...

This paper discusses the electoral implications of psychological motivation on voting functions. We tested a claim of the Weber-Fechner law as applied to electoral behaviour-specifically, that an expanded public sector leads politicians to make more significant, opportunistic distortions of...

Dynamic models of learning and adaptation have provided realistic predictions in terms of voting behavior. This study aims at contributing to their scant empirical verification. We develop a learning algorithm based on bounded rationality estimating the pattern of learning process through a...

Dynamic models of learning and adaptation have provided realistic predictions in terms of voting behavior. This study aims at contributing to their scant empirical verification. We develop a learning algorithm based on bounded rationality estimating the pattern of learning process through a...

We analyse the effects of local corruption on electoral outcomes with Spanish data. Based upon press reports published between 1996 and 2009, we are able to construct a novel database on corruption scandals and news related to bribe-taking in exchange for amendments to land use plans. Our data...

We analyse the effects of local corruption on electoral outcomes with Spanish data. Based upon press reports published between 1996 and 2009, we are able to construct a novel database on corruption scandals and news related to bribe-taking in exchange for amendments to land use plans. Our data...