In this paper, we provide an explanation of the democratic peace hypothesis, i.e., the observation that democracies rarely fight one another. We show that in the presence of information asymmetries and strategic complements, the strategic interaction between two democracies differs from any...

In this paper we analyze elections when voters underestimate the correlation between their information sources ("correlation neglect"). We find that this cognitive bias can improve political outcomes. We show that the extreme beliefs which result from correlation neglect induce some voters to...

We analyze preferences over redistribution in societies with costly (positive) sorting according to income. We identify a new motivation for redistribution, where individuals support taxation in order to reduce the incentives to sort. We characterize a simple condition over income distributions...

The phenomenon of choice shifts in group decision-making has received attention in the social psychology literature. Faced with a risky group decision, individuals appear to support more extreme choices relative to those they would make on their own. This paper demonstrates that from a...

We analyze a cheap talk game, à la Crawford and Sobel, in a multidimensional state and policy space. A feature of the multidimensional state space is that communication on one dimension often reveals information on others. We show how this feature imposes bounds on communication. Copyright The...