In their pursuit of being elected, politicians might not provide their constituents with independent viewpoints, but …, "candor", can be sustained as equilibria. This means that the public's trust or distrust in politicians may be self …-fulfilling prophecies. Importantly, the more informed politicians are about public opinion, the more likely it is that populist behavior can …

election is safe for the incumbent (low competition) or if it is extremely fragile (high competition) then corruption is higher … results suggest that over-reliance on elections to discipline politicians is misplaced. …

́electoral prospects improve? We study this question with a natural experiment from the German federal state of Hesse. The … experiment is the abolishment of an explicit electoral threshold (the so called "five percent hurdle") for local elections in … elections, but local politicians from large mainstream parties had the ability to adjust municipal political institutions in …

' electoral prospects improve? We study this question with a natural experiment from the German federal State of Hesse. The … experiment is the abolishment of an explicit electoral threshold (the so called "five percent hurdle") for local elections in … elections, but local politicians from mainstream parties had the ability to adjust municipal political institutions in such as …

When politicians have lower discount factors than voters, democratic elections cannot sufficiently motivate politicians … to undertake long-term socially beneficial projects. When politicians can offer incentive contracts which become … politicians’ time preferences. In the non-commitment case, incentive contracts may need to include a golden parachute clause …

voters' capacity to identify and empower well-suited politicians. In our model, candidates are heterogeneous in two … concentration of power in the hands of the election winner is optimal if and only if the conflict of interest is small. …