Issue Advocacy and Mass Political Sophistication
In: Journal of institutional and theoretical economics: JITE, Band 169, Heft 1, S. 157
ISSN: 1614-0559
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In: Journal of institutional and theoretical economics: JITE, Band 169, Heft 1, S. 157
ISSN: 1614-0559
Contests are well-established mechanisms for political lobbying, innovation, rentseeking, incentivizing workers, and advancing R&D. A well-known theoretical result in the contest literature is that greater heterogeneity decreases investments of contestants because of the "discouragement effect." Leveling the playing field by favoring weaker contestants through strict bid-caps and favorable tie-breaking rules can reduce discouragement and increase the designer's revenue. We test these predictions in a laboratory experiment. Our data confirm that placing bid-caps and using favorable tie-breaking rules significantly diminishes discouragement in weaker contestants. The impact on revenue is more intricate. In contrast to theory, a strict bid-cap does not increase revenue, but a mild bid-cap can increase revenue even when not predicted by theory. Our data also show that tie-breaking rules seem to have little impact on the designer's revenue: the encouragement of weaker contestants is offset by stronger contestants competing less aggressively. We discuss deviations from the Nash predictions in light of different behavioral approaches.
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In: Journal of Monetary Economics, Band 103, S. 123-136
In: Journal of political economy, Band 126, Heft 1, S. 107-149
ISSN: 1537-534X
In: CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP13280
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In: CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP10408
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A group of agents wants to reform the status quo if and only if this is Pareto improving. Agents have private information and may have common or private objectives, which creates a tension between information aggregation and minority protection. We analyze a simple voting system - majority rule with veto power (Veto) - that essentially resolves this tension, for it combines the advantageous properties of both majority and unanimity rules. We argue that our results shed new light on the evolution of voting rules in the EU institutions and could help to inform debates about policy reforms in cases such as juries in the US.
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In: NBER Working Paper No. w20417
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In: EPSA Annual General Conference 2013
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In: MPI Collective Goods Preprint, No. 2012/20
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In: The economic journal: the journal of the Royal Economic Society
ISSN: 1468-0297
Abstract
The swing voter's curse is useful for explaining patterns of voter participation, but arises because voters restrict attention to the rare event of a pivotal vote. Recent empirical evidence suggests that electoral margins influence policy outcomes, even away from the 50% threshold. If so, voters should also pay attention to the marginal impact of a vote. Adopting this assumption, we find that a marginal voter's curse gives voters a new reason to abstain, to avoid diluting the pool of information. The two curses have similar origins and exhibit similar patterns, but the marginal voter's curse is both stronger and more robust. In fact, the swing voter's curse turns out to be knife-edge: in large elections, a model with both pivotal and marginal considerations and a model with marginal considerations alone generate identical equilibrium behavior.
In: CESifo Working Paper Series No. 5955
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In: Journal of political economy, Band 120, Heft 4, S. 593-658
ISSN: 1537-534X