How quorum rules distort referendum outcomes: Evidence from a pivotal voter model

In many jurisdictions, whether referendum results are binding depends on legally defined quorum requirements. We use a pivotal voter model to examine the consequences of such requirements. We find that, although quorum rules differ in consequences, a status quo bias that is usually attributed need not be present and that quorum rules may work against the status quo. The rules can also both favor minorities and reduce voter turnout. Because quorum rules can create situations in which the secrecy of the vote is compromised, the door is opened to undemocratic forms of social and political pressure.     

A tale of two unions: divergent platforms and their constituencies

ABSTRACT

The median voter theorem has regularly been used in economics to represent the behaviour of teachers unions. Little empirical work, however, tests whether this framework is a good fit for teachers unions. We examine voting behaviour in union representative elections between the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers and find evidence of divergent constituencies. We investigate whether the median voter explains the outcomes of elections in 1977–1979. If both teachers unions select the platform desired by the median voter, there should be no systematic differences in voter preferences for unions. We find that these unions were fundamentally different and attracted distinct voting coalitions. The main implication of this study is that researchers should consider these two unions, and their effect on districts, as distinct.     

Victory margins and the paradox of voting

This paper addresses a simple question: why do people vote? Though simple, this question remains unanswered despite the considerable attention it has received. In this paper, I show that purely rational–instrumental factors explain a large fraction of turnout variations, provided that the effect of the margin of victory on implemented policy is considered. I extend Myerson's models of elections based on Poisson games, and show that, when platforms are responsive to vote shares, the predictions of the model become consistent with several stylized facts, including the secular fall in turnout rates in the US.     

Welfare Reducing Polls

We study costly majority voting when voters rationally anticipate others have similar preferences. The correlation in preferences lowers expected turnout because votes have a positive externality on those who abstain. We study the effects of the public release of information (polls) on participation levels. Polls raise expected turnout but reduce expected welfare because they stimulate the “wrong” group to participate resulting in a “toss-up” election. Our novel results highlight the adverse effects of providing information about the electorate’s preferences and may explain why some countries bar opinion polls close to an election date.     

Local public expenditure in Sweden a model where the median voter is not necessarily decisive

This paper deals with local public expenditures, and the analysis is based on cross-section data for the Swedish municipalities. Two models are estimated; one is the basic median voter model where the decisive voter is assumed to be the voter with median income, while the other is a more general statistical alternative. The statistical alternative nests the basic median voter model as a special case, which makes it easy to test the null hypothesis that the basic median voter model is the correct model, given that the alternative is the true general structure. Although our results indicate a rejection of the null hypothesis, the estimation results are, nevertheless, similar for the two models.     

Persuasion with communication costs

This paper studies strategic transmission of verifiable information with reporting costs that continuously increase in the precision of the report. Contrary to previous literature, it is shown that the unraveling result first derived by Milgrom (1981) is relatively robust to costly reporting. A separating equilibrium exists even with arbitrarily high reporting costs. Intuitively, the costs work as a signaling device and a combination of disclosure of information and costly signaling accomplishes full separation. With reporting costs there are typically multiple equilibria. For example, a pooling equilibrium exists if and only if the reporting costs are high. Finally, a separating equilibrium exists when the receiver has to make a costly effort in order to access the information in a report, as long as this cost is not too high.     

Electoral competition with policy-motivated candidates

In the multi-dimensional spatial model of elections with two policy-motivated candidates, we prove that the candidates must adopt the same policy platform in equilibrium. Moreover, when the number of voters is odd, if the gradients of the candidates' utility functions point in different directions, then they must locate at some voter's ideal point and a strong symmetry condition must be satisfied: in particular, it must be possible to pair some voters so that their gradients point in exactly opposite directions. If the number of dimensions is more than two, then our condition is knife-edge. When the number of voters is even, the situation is worse: such equilibria never exist, regardless of the dimensionality of the policy space.     

再分配倾向的决定:对既有文献的考察

本文对再分配倾向决定领域的既有文献进行详尽考察,认为从内在动力角度来理解各种决定因素才是根本,归纳提炼了再分配倾向决定的四大动机:经济利益动机、风险规避动机、公平信念动机和声誉理想动机。再分配倾向决定的四大动机通过不尽相同的理论逻辑机制和多种实证影响因素对人们的再分配倾向产生影响,四大动机的框架为实证研究中的因素筛选提供了有力的工具。对于该领域进一步的研究,本文提出应用实验手段的重要性,并应注意宏观变量对再分配倾向的内生性影响。     

Bounding the benefits of stochastic auditing: The case of risk-neutral agents

Summary. In the context of a costly-state-verification model with a risk-neutral agent having limited liability, it has been postulated that allowing stochastic auditing reduces the asymmetric information problem to a trivial one: i.e., the first best can be approached arbitrarily closely with feasible contracts. This paper proves the postulate to be false: the surplus from feasible contracts is bounded strictly below the first-best surplus level. The bound is straightforward to compute in examples. The paper thus removes a justification for the restriction to deterministic auditing commonly made in the literature. Received: July 18, 1997; revised version: February 23, 1998     

Complementarities and costly investment in a growth model

We develop a one-sector growth model whose key aspect is the combination of the assumptions of internal costly investment in capital and complementarities between capital goods in the production function. Despite the nonlinearity generated by these assumptions, the model delivers a single equilibrium.      

Communication in repeated games with costly monitoring

We study repeated games with discounting where perfect monitoring is possible, but costly. It is shown that if players can make public announcements, then every payoff vector which is an interior point in the set of feasible and individually rational payoffs can be implemented in a sequential equilibrium of the repeated game when the discount factor is high enough. Thus, efficiency can be approximated even when the cost of monitoring is high, provided that the discount factor is high enough.     

A costly state verification model with diversity of opinions

Summary. In simple models of borrowing and lending with ex-post asymmetric information, Gale and Hellwig (1985) and Williamson (1986) have shown that optimal debt contracts are simple debt contracts where borrowers repay a fixed interest rate whenever possible and lenders seize all the profit when borrowers default. In this note, we depart from their works by assuming that borrowers and lenders have heterogeneous beliefs, and show that simple debt contracts do not necessarily survive as optimal contracts.JEL Classification Numbers: G3, D8.     

Costly state verification and debt contracts: a critical resume

This paper presents a critical review of the Costly State Verification framework starting from the basic model by Gale and Hellwig [Review of Economic Studies 52 (1985) 647] and further examining the most recent developments. It aims both at discussing the optimality of debt contract in alternative contexts and at offering a reply to the critiques usually moved to this approach within a unified framework.     

公司治理投票机制优化设计初探

借鉴一般性政治投票机制,并结合公司治理目的及其利益主体特性,提出两种改进公司治理投票机制的方案——可转移的累积投票和贮存式投票,并对这两种改进方案的积极意义进行评估和分析。最后,对公司治理投票机制优化设计的后续研究问题进行了展望。     

An institutional analysis of voter turnout: the role of primary type and the expressive and instrumental voting hypotheses

Recent events highlight primary type as an institutional variable that merits further examination in the economics literature on voter turnout. Using panel data for U.S. gubernatorial elections and treating primary type as a proxy for candidate deviation from the median voter, we test whether primary type changes voter turnout and whether that change is dominated by instrumental or expressive voting. The results show that states with more open primaries tend to have greater voter turnout in general elections, and that this increase reflects the effect of open primaries on expressive voting.