Suchergebnisse

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 media bias provides a mechanism through which political polarization can affect electoral outcomes. In our model, media firms' profits depend on their audience rating. Maximizing profits may involve catering to a partisan audience by slanting the news. While voters are rational, understand the nature of the news suppression bias and update appropriately, important information is lost through bias, potentially resulting in inefficient electoral outcomes. We show that polarization increases the profitability of slanting news, thereby raising the likelihood of electoral mistakes. We also show that, if media are biased, then there are some news realizations such that the electorate appears more polarized to an outside observer, even if citizens' policy preferences do not change.

AbstractWe study the wage‐setting problem of an employer with private information about demand for its product when workers can engage in costly on‐the‐job search. Employers understand that low wage offers may convey bad news that induces workers to search. The unique perfect sequential equilibrium wage strategy is characterized by: (i) pooling by intermediate‐revenue employers on a common wage that just deters search, (ii) discontinuously lower revealing offers by low‐revenue employers for whom the benefit of deterring search fails to warrant the required high pooling wage and (iii) high revealing offers by high‐revenue employers seeking to deter aggressive raiders.

We study dynamic international agreements when one of the negotiating parties faces a threat of electoral replacement during negotiations, when agreements made before the election are the starting point for any subsequent renegotiation, and when governments cannot commit to future negotiation strategies. Conflicts of interest between governments may be softened or intensified by the governments' conflicts of interest with voters. We characterize when the threat of electoral turnover strengthens the prospect for successful negotiations, when it may cause negotiations to fail, and how it affects the division of the surplus from cooperation. We also show how changes in domestic politics—including uncertainty about the preferences of domestic political parties—affect a domestic government's ability to extract greater concessions in negotiations.

AbstractWe study dynamic policymaking when today's policy agreement becomes tomorrow's status quo, agents account for the consequences of today's policies for future policy outcomes, and there is uncertainty about who will hold future political power to propose and veto future policy changes. Today's agenda setter holds back from fully exploiting present opportunities to move policy toward her ideal point whenever future proposer and veto players are likely to be aligned either in favor of reform or against it. Otherwise, agenda setters advance their short‐run interests. Optimal proposals can vary discontinuously and nonmonotonically with political fundamentals.