The paper developed a political economy model about endogenous trade policy along the lines of the well known contribution of Grossman and Helpman (1994). In our case the structure of the economy is standard (neoclassical trade model instead of the specific factor trade model of the original...

Campaign promises and campaign spending are modelled as integral parts of a signaling mechanism that transmits information about can- didates' abilities and proposed policies to the voters. We suggest that viewing promises and spending as inseparable parts of the same mechanism is essential in...

In this paper we present a generalization of power indices which includes the preferences of the voters. Using a Multilinear Extension perspective (Owen, 1972a) we measure the probability of the players' voting 'yes' for a particular political issue. Further, we randomize the issues and show the...

This paper is devoted to the analysis of two tiers voting rules. First, one candidate is elected in every jurisdiction and next, an aggregation procedure collects the results from the jurisdictions in order to designate the final winner. It appears that whenever individuals are allowed to change...

In spite of the clear objective assigned to the integration process in the 1950s, the institutional status of the European Union remains ambiguous and uneasy to define. The argument that we present in this article is that Europe has always hesitated between two forms of federalism. We use an...

Professional experts offer advice with the objective of appearing well informed. Their ability is evaluated on the basis of the advice given and the realized state of the world. We model this situation as a reputational cheap-talk game with continuous signal, state, and ability type spaces....

The winner of a battle for a throne can either execute or spare the loser; if the loser is spared, he contends the throne in the next period. Executing the losing contender gives the winner an additional quiet period, but then his life is at risk if he loses to some future contender. The...