We analyze the role of political competition on the type of economic policies that are selected in a one sector model of economic growth. We identify conditions under which neoclassical optimal growth plans occur, and conditions in which political business cycles occur. We find that the ability...

This paper formalizes the problem of designing optimal agendas for voting over finite alternative spaces, when voters are assumed to be "naive," (i.e., they do not vote strategically). The class of agendas considered here is quite broad, and includes, as special cases, such methods as pairwise...

We report experimental results from long sequences of decisions in environments that are theoretically prone to severe information cascades. Observed behaviour is much different—information cascades are ephemeral. We study the implications of a theoretical model based on quantal response...