Complete information pivotal-voter model with asymmetric group size and asymmetric benefits

We analyze a standard pivotal-voter model under majority rule, with two rival groups of players, each preferring one of two public policies and simultaneously deciding whether to cast a costly vote, as in Palfrey and Rosenthal (1983). We allow the benefit of the favorite public policy to differ across groups and impose an intuitive refinement, namely that voting probabilities are continuous in the cost of voting to pin down a unique equilibrium. The unique cost-continuous equilibrium depends on a key threshold that compares the sizes of the two groups.     

Growing up in a civil war and political participation: Evidence from Guatemala*

Guatemala experienced a 36-year-long civil war from 1960 to 1996. I use this event to understand whether growing up in an area of political violence has any impact on future political participation. I combine data from the distribution of the number of human rights violations during Guatemala's civil war with nationally representative data on political participation from the 2001 Living Standard Measurement Survey. Results suggest that exposure to conflict during youth affects political participation in adulthood. Exposure to conflict has a small negative association with formal political engagement and it has no effect on community participation. The results also indicate a negative relationship between growing up in an area of political violence and trust in the judicial system as adults.     

Electoral Thresholds as Coordination Devices

In this paper, we study one‐person–one‐vote parliamentary elections where voters care both about the winner of elections and about the composition of the parliament. Parties enter the parliament if and only if their vote share exceeds some predetermined threshold. We show that equilibria generically exist in which all parties obtain a non‐degenerate vote‐share and, perhaps more importantly, we show that the size of the electoral threshold acts as a coordination device, which crucially affects the win prospects of the Condorcet winner party. In particular, we argue that the win prospects of the Condorcet winner party decrease with the size of the entry threshold.     

Immigration,Ethnic Diversity,and Political Outcomes: Evidence from Denmark

I study the impact of immigration and increasing ethnic diversity on political outcomes in immigrant‐receiving countries, focusing on immigration and election outcomes in Danish municipalities between 1981 and 2001. A novel instrumental variable strategy based on historical housing stock data addresses issues of endogenous location choices of immigrants and a rich set of control variables is employed to isolate ethnic diversity effects from those of other immigrant characteristics. Increases in local ethnic diversity lead to rightward shifts in election outcomes by shifting electoral support away from traditional “big government” left‐wing parties and towards anti‐immigrant nationalist parties. This holds for both local and national elections.     

多维条件下的单峰定理研究

对著名经济学家邓肯·布莱克的单峰定理进行深入研究,一维条件下,个体为单峰偏好可以解决＂投票悖论＂。将单峰偏好分析从一维条件扩展到二维条件直至N维条件,探讨N维条件下单峰定理是否适用。     

A new view of shareholder voting in the nineteenth century: evidence from Brazil,England and France

Business corporations in the nineteenth century often imposed limits on the voting rights of large shareholders. Economic historians have generally interpreted these voting restrictions as a contractual mechanism designed to protect small shareholders in a legal environment that afforded insufficient investor protection. This dominant account, however, fails to explain the variation in the incidence of voting restrictions across different industries and firm ownership structures, as well as their eventual disappearance from corporate charters over time. In this Article, we advance an alternative interpretation for these early voting schemes as efforts at consumer protection employed primarily by firms that were local service monopolies and collectively owned by their principal customers, none of whom wished the firm to come under the exclusive control of their competitors or of profit-maximising investors. We explore and test this proposition by analysing data on shareholder voting rights in the nineteenth century in Brazil, England, and France.     

The political economy of Brexit: explaining the vote

The UK’s closely contested Brexit vote to leave the EU is expected to have a significant impact on the UK and EU. While calculating the impact of Brexit is difficult since the UK is still formally a member of the EU, understanding the vote is possible. Leading up to the referendum, public opinion was divided along demographic and economic lines. This article uses referendum results at the local government level to test whether national, racial, religious and economic factors actually influenced the vote. Results indicate that demographic variables played a role while economic variables did not.     

Generational conflict and education politics: Implications for growth and welfare

This study considers the politics of public education and its impact on economic growth and welfare across generations. We employ probabilistic voting to demonstrate the generational conflict regarding taxes and spending and show that aging shifts the tax burden from the retired to the working generation, reduces public education spending, and ultimately slows economic growth. We subsequently consider a legal constraint that aims to boost education spending: a spending floor for education. This constraint stimulates economic growth but creates a trade-off between current and future generations’ welfare. Finally, the quantitative implications of our results are explored by calibrating the model to the Japanese economy.