Suchergebnisse

AbstractWe propose a theory of democratic backsliding where citizens' retrospective assessment of an incumbent politician depends on expectations that are endogenous to the incumbent's behaviour. We show that democratic backsliding can occur even when most citizens and most politicians intrinsically value democracy. By challenging norms of democracy, an incumbent can lower citizens' expectations; by not doubling down on this challenge, he can then beat this lowered standard. As a result, gradual backsliding can actually enhance an incumbent's popular support not despite but because of citizens' opposition to backsliding. This mechanism can only arise when citizens are uncertain enough about incumbents' preferences (e.g. owing to programmatically weak parties). Mass polarization, instead, can reduce the occurrence of backsliding while simultaneously increasing its severity.

AbstractWe present a novel approach for modelling self serving bias by way of reference dependence. Bias is modelled as a systematic individual level deviation of the endogenous reference point from the expected price of a good in a two person k‐double auction. We find that bias decreases the efficiency of the model, and that efficiency is decreasing in both the level of bias and reference dependence.

Topics related to the structure of the temporal system of Albanian language always give opportunities for new discussions to deal with certain aspects related to various forms of this system, and one of them is the aorist, as a tense containing many semantic, temporal, aspectual, stylistic values, etc. The relationships that exist between the verbal tenses in this system within the absolute time-relative time dimension, which relate to the independent or dependent use of temporal forms against one another in different discoursing contexts, make up an interpretation-based approach to interest. Hence, the essential objective of this paper will be specifically the relations of the Albanian aorist to the other verbal forms, always observed with a time reference point, to illuminate the character of these purely temporal relations against each other under all circumstances of the actions that take place and are displayed by verbal forms in different contexts, relying on the corpus of examined materials.

Hart and John Moore (2008) introduce new behavioral assumptions that can explain long-term contracts and the employment relation. We examine experimentally their idea that contracts serve as reference points. The evidence confirms the prediction that there is a trade-off between rigidity and flexibility. Flexible contracts—which would dominate rigid contracts under standard assumptions—cause significant shading in ex post performance, while under rigid contracts much less shading occurs. The experiment appears to reveal a new behavioral force: ex ante competition legitimizes the terms of a contract, and aggrievement and shading occur mainly about outcomes within the contract. (JEL D44, D86, J41)