One votes from self-interest or from a sense of duty. Voting from self-interest requires there to be some chance, however small, that one's vote swings the outcome of an election from one political party to another. This paper is a discussion of three models of what that chance might be: the...

People vote from self-interest or from a sense of duty. Voting from self-interest requires there to be some chance, however small, that one's vote swings the outcome of the election from the political party one opposes to the political party one favours. This paper is a discussion of three...

Government by majority rule voting requires that compromise be attainable, but not too easily. Little of the nation's business could be transacted without an ability on the part of the legislators and political parties to strike bargains, but government by majority rule voting could not...

A duty to vote may be many things. It may be no more than an obligation to cast one's ballot as self-interestedly or as altruistically as one pleases. It may a requirement to vote for the political party most likely to yield the highest social welfare. It may be a requirement to choose between...

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...

This bold, imaginative book advances an entirely new theory of voters’ behavior.The starting point for this theory is that individuals are endowed with a set of beliefs, ora worldview, and derive psychological benefits from acting in accordance with these beliefs.However, the beliefs of most...

Der Nobelpreisträger AMARTYA SEN spricht von einer Fetischisierung der Wahlfreiheit in unserer Gesellschaft und mahnt darüber nachzudenken, ob wir ihr Nahrung oder Entbehrung verdanken. Wahlfreiheit, so SEN, sei nicht unbedingt mit Feiheit gleichzusetzen.In der Tat hat sich das Prinzip der...

The paper presents a model where public pensions are determined by majority voting. Voters differ by age and income. Moreover, life expectancy increases with income. Depending on the strength of the link between contributions and benefits, and the relationship between income and life expectancy,...