This paper examines an equilibrium model of social memory -- a society's vicarious beliefs about its past. We show that incorrect social memory is a key ingredient in creating and perpetuating destructive conflicts. We analyze an infinite-horizon model in which two countries face off each period...

This paper introduces a class of games designed to study dynamic, endogenous reform of political institutions. Dynamic political games (DPGs) are dynamic games in which institutional choice is both recursive and instrumental. Future political aggregation rules are decided under current ones, and...

A canonical interpretation of an infinitely repeated game is that of a "dynastic" repeated game: a stage game repeatedly played by successive generations of finitely-lived players with dynastic preferences. These two models are in fact equivalent when the past history of play is observable to...

This paper examines the mechanics of intertemporal information provision in dynastic governments.

This paper examines endogenous institutional change in a class of dynamic political games. The political aggregation rules used at date t+1 are instrumental choices under rules at date t. Effectively, rules are "players" who can strategically delegate future policy-making authority to different...

This paper adopts a revealed preference" approach to the question of what can be inferred about bias in a political system. We model an economy and its political system from the point of view of an outside observer." The observer sees a finite sequence of policy data, but does not observe either...