In this paper, citizens vote in order to influence the election outcome and in order to signal their unobserved characteristics to others. The model is one of rational voting and generates the following predictions: (i) The paradox of not voting does not arise, because the benefit of voting does...

In this paper, citizens vote in order to influence the election outcome and in order to signal their unobserved characteristics to others. The model is one of rational voting and generates the following predictions: (i) The paradox of not voting does not arise, because the benefit of voting does...

In this paper, citizens vote in order to influence the election outcome and in order to signal their unobserved characteristics to others. The model is one of rational voting and generates the following predictions: (i) The paradox of not voting does not arise, because the benefit of voting does...

Since the chance of swaying the outcome of an election by voting is usually very small, it cannot be that voters vote solely for that purpose. So why do we vote? One explanation is that smarter or more educated voters have access to better information about the candidates, and are concerned with...

In this paper, citizens vote in order to influence the election outcome and in order to signal their unobserved characteristics to others. The model is one of rational voting and generates the following predictions: (i) The paradox of not voting does not arise, because the benefit of voting does...

Campaign finance contributions may influence policy by affecting elections or influencing the choices of politicians once in office. To study the trade-offs between these two paths to influence, we use a game in which contributions may affect electoral outcomes and signal policy-relevant...

Many political commentators diagnose an increasing polarization of the U.S. electorate into two opposing camps. However, in standard spatial voting models, changes in the political preference distribution are irrelevant as long as the position of the median voter does not change. We show that...

It can be advantageous for an office motivated party A to spend effort to make it public that a group of voters will lose from party A s policy proposal. Such effort is called inverse campaigning. The inverse campaigning equilibria are described for the case where the two parties can...

This study develops a political competition model in which campaign platforms are partially binding. A candidate who implements a policy that differs from his/her platform must pay a cost of betrayal, which increases with the size of the discrepancy. I also assume that voters are uncertain about...