Several countries practice a system where laymen, who lack legal education, participate in the judicial decision making. Yet, little is known about their potential influence on the court rulings. In Sweden lay judges (namndeman) are affiliated with the political parties and appointed in...

Political competition, party strategy and communication in the era of social media are growing issues. Due to the increasing social media presence of parties and voters alike, direct communication is more important for party competition. This paper aims to improve the methodological approach...

It is often conjectured that participatory decision making may increase acceptance even of unfavorable decisions. The present paper tests this conjecture in a three-person power-to-take game. Two takers decide which fraction of the responder's endowment to transfer to themselves; the responder...

Time constraints, managerial power, and reputational concerns can impede board communication. This paper develops a model where board decisions depend on directors' effort in communicating their information to others. I show that directors communicate more effectively when pressure for...

Government or company decisions on whom to hire are mostly delegated to politicians, public sector officials or human resources and procurement managers. Due to anti-corruption laws, agents cannot sell contracts or positions that they are delegated to decide upon. Even if bribing is ruled out,...

Several countries practice a system where laymen, who lack legal education, participate in the judicial decision making. Yet, little is known about their potential influence on the court rulings. In Sweden lay judges (namndeman) are affiliated with the political parties and appointed in...

This paper offers an explanation for why policy makers stick to inefficient policy decisions. I argue that repealing a policy is a bad signal to voters about the policy maker's competence if voters do not have complete knowledge about the effects of implemented policies. I derive the optimal...

We provide an explanation why centralisation of political decision makingresults in overspending in some policy domains, whereas too low spending persists in others.We study a model in which delegates from jurisdictions bargain over local public goods provision.If all of the costs of public...

I investigate minority votes in the German Council of Economic Experts. The dataset contains information on the voting behavior of the council members over the period 1971-2011. The results show that the best predictor of minority voting is being nominated by the trade unions: a council member...

In Switzerland, two key church institutions - the Conference of Swiss Bishops (CSB) and the Federation of Protestant Churches (FPC) - make public recommendations on how to vote for certain referenda. We leverage this unique situation to directly measure religious organizations ́power to shape...