This paper utilizes a simple model of redistributive politics with voter abstention to analyze the impact of nonpartisan ‘get-out-the-vote' efforts on policy outcomes. Although such efforts are often promoted on the grounds that they provide the social benefit of increasing participation in...

We consider campaign competition in which candidates compete for votes among a continuum of voters by engaging in persuasive efforts that are targetable. Each individual voter is persuaded by campaign effort and votes for the candidate who targets more persuasive effort to this voter. Each...

We experimentally test the qualitatively different equilibrium predictions of two theoretical models of attack and defense of a weakest-link network of targets. In such a network, the attacker's objective is to assault at least one target successfully and the defender's objective is to defend...

The Colonel Blotto game is a two-player constant-sum game in which each player simultaneously distributes her fixed level of resources across a set of contests. In the traditional formulation of the Colonel Blotto game, the players' resources are quot;use it or lose itquot; in the sense that any...

We examine an endogenous, sunk budget extension of Myerson's (1993) two-candidate model of political competition in which candidates simultaneously allocate an exogenous level of a use-it-or-lose-it persuasive advertising resource across a homogeneous electorate of unit measure. We completely...

This paper examines a new extensive-form variation of the Colonel Blotto game with two distinct features: (i) in the first stage each player inherits an initial allocation of force across battlefields, which is publicly observable, and (ii) in the second stage it is costly to relocate forces...

In this paper, we generalize the General Lotto game and the Colonel Blotto game to allow for battlefield valuations that are heterogeneous across battlefields and asymmetric across players, and for the players to have asymmetric resource constraints. We completely characterize Nash equilibrium...

We develop a two-period model of redistributive politics in which two politicians compete in an election in each period. In the first period, the politicians propose both whether to experiment with an efficient reform with uncertain benefits and choose the amount of public debt. Politicians also...