Search
Results
-
Costs of change, political polarization, and re-election hurdles
(2015)Economics Working Paper SeriesWe develop and study a two-period model of political competition with office- and policy-motivated candidates, in which (i) changes of policies impose costs on all individuals and (ii) such costs increase with the magnitude of the policy change. We show that there is an optimal positive level of costs of change that minimizes policy polarization and maximizes welfare. One interpretation of this finding is that societies with intermediate ...Working Paper -
-
-
Election security and economics: it's all about Eve
(2017)Economics Working Paper SeriesWorking Paper -
Sophisticated attacks on decoy ballots: A Devil's menu and the market for lemons
(2017)Economics Working Paper SeriesWorking Paper -
A dynamic model of electoral competition with costly policy changes
(2017)Economics Working Paper SeriesWorking Paper -
Coalition-preclusion contracts and moderate policies
(2014)Economics Working Paper SeriesWorking Paper -
Channeling the final say in politics
(2012)Economics Working Paper SeriesWe examine how the final say in a sequence of proposals for local public project provision, financing, and redistribution can be channeled towards socially desirable outcomes, thereby breaking the dictatorial power of the last agenda-setter. Individuals are heterogeneous with some citizens benefiting from the public project (winners) and the rest losing (losers) relative to per-capita costs. Our main insight is that a simple ban on subsidies ...Working Paper -
Semi-flexible majority rules for public good provision
(2017)Economics Working Paper SeriesWe introduce a two-stage, multiple-round voting procedure where the thresholds needed for approval require a qualified majority and vary with the proposal on the table. We apply such a procedure to instances of public-good provision where the citizens’ valuations can take two values and are private. We show that the procedure elicits and aggregates the information about the valuations and implements the utilitarian optimal public good ...Working Paper