A fat and a healthy good provide immediate gratification, and cause health costs or benefits in the long run, which are misperceived. Additionally, the fat good (healthy good) increases (decreases) health care costs by increasing (decreasing) the probability of suffering from a chronic disease...

Models of political competition portray political candidates as seeking the support of the median voter to win elections by majority voting. In practice, political candidates seek supermajorities rather than majorities based on support of the median voter. We study the political benefits from...

I exploit a large natural experiment in Australia that saw the House of Representatives expand from 125 districts to 148 districts. This required substantial changes to electoral boundaries, which, for the first time, were determined by a body that was not subject to ministerial discretion. As a...

We use voting experiments to examine the effects of different primary types on voter turnout, voter choice and election outcomes. We use monetary incentives to induce our participants' preferences for candidate and party, eliminating the incentive for expressive voting, allowing us to focus...

We introduce a solution concept in the context of large elections with private information by embedding a model of boundedly rational voters into an otherwise standard equilibrium setting. A retrospective voting equilibrium (RVE) formalizes the idea that voters evaluate alternatives based on...

I develop a model of strategic entry by candidates for office in runoff elections under aggregate uncertainty. I introduce aggregate uncertainty by making candidates unsure of the distribution of voter preferences in the electorate. The set of three candidate equilibria expands and equilibrium...

The direct democratic choice of an examination standard, i.e., a performance level required to graduate, is evaluated against a utilitarian welfare function. It is shown that the median preferred standard is inefficiently low if the marginal cost of reaching a higher performance reacts more...

This paper investigates the effects of political representation on electoral outcomes at the party and coalition levels in proportional election systems using data from Swedish local government elections. There are two notions of representation, namely, to hold seats and to belong to the ruling...

Prozent-Hürden sollen eine Zersplitterung in Parlamenten verhindern und Parteien nur in Fraktionsstärke hineinlassen. Dazu werden bislang die Stimmen für Parteien unterhalb der Hürde gar nicht berücksichtigt. Diese Ungleichheit der Wahl und Benachteiligung von kleinen Parteien ließe sich...