Debating over efficiency-enhancing but inequality-increasing reforms accounts for the routine business of democratic institutions. Fernandez and Rodrik (1991) hold that anti-reform bias can be attributed to individual-specific uncertainty regarding the distribution of gains and losses resulting...

Debating over efficiency-enhancing but inequality-increasing reforms accounts for the routine business of democratic institutions. Fernandez and Rodrik (1991) hold that anti-reform bias can be attributed to individual-specific uncertainty regarding the distribution of gains and losses resulting...

In many bargaining situations, the distribution of seats or voting weights does not accurately reflect bargaining power. Maaser, Paetzel and Traub (Games and Economic Behavior, 2019) conducted an experiment to investigate the effect of such nominal power differences in the classic Baron-Ferejohn...

In real world bargaining the distribution of seats or voting weights often does not accurately reflect real power. Game-theory predictions are insensitive to nominal differences. We refer to the converse idea that nominal differences matter as power illusion. We experimentally study the...

One feature of legislative bargaining in naturally occurring settings is that the distribution of seats or voting weights often does not accurately reflect bargaining power. Game-theoretic predictions about payoffs and coalition formation are insensitive to nominal differences in vote...

In this paper, we introduce a skewness-adjusted social-preferences functional, which models social preferences as a function of the skewness of the human capital distribution. We hypothesize that the “elite” of the society becomes more selfish with increasing skewness of the human-capital...

In many bargaining situations, the distribution of seats or voting weights does not accurately reflect bargaining power. Maaser, Paetzel and Traub (Games and Economic Behavior, 2019) conducted an experiment to investigate the effect of such nominal power differences in the classic Baron-Ferejohn...