Are Voters Cursed When Politicians Conceal Policy Preferences?

When Topologists Are Politicians...

When Do Voters Punish Corrupt Politicians? Experimental Evidence from Brazil

While there is a vast literature about the consequences of corruption, research focused on the causes of non-corrupt governments is still nascent. Electoral accountability is one important means of changing existing corruption dynamics in government, and one potential way of punishing corrupt elected officials is to give voters information about the corrupt behavior. In a randomized field exper...

Are Pacs Trying to Influence Politicians or Voters?

Political Action Committees (PACs) can a€ect public policies in either of two ways: altering legislators' roll-call voting behavior, or in ̄uencing election outcomes. This paper develops a dynamic model demonstrating that the relative importance of the election-in ̄uencing channel is easily underestimated. A one-time contribution to a candidate who supports the PAC's position that alters an elect...

The Demand for Bad Policy when Voters Underappreciate Equilibrium Effects

We study whether and why voters may choose inefficient policies and institutions. We show that a majority of subjects in an experiment vote against policies that would help them overcome social dilemmas. This is due to their failure to fully anticipate the equilibrium effects of new policies. More precisely, subjects systematically underappreciate the extent to which policy changes affect other...

1 Public pensions and immigration policy when voters are differently skilled

Although immigration of workers generates a positive externality on members of domestic pension systems, many countries are very reluctant to allow foreigners into their labor markets. In a political economic framework, we explain this voting outcome by considering a young unskilled median voter who faces – in addition to a reduction of contribution rates – negative effects from immigration as ...