The Expansion of Higher Education and Time-Consistent Taxation This paper analyzes educational choices and political support for subsidies to higher education in the presence of a time-consistency problem in income redistribution. There may be political support for so generous subsidization that it motivates the median voter to obtain higher education. As a result of increasing own income, the ...

I analyze the effect of a sequential election system when the first voter has private information using a simple two candidate, two voter model in which the second voter is decisive. Both voters observe the candidates’ policy positions, but only the first voter observes which candidate is competent. I show that in equilibrium the candidates pander to the policy preferences of the first voter. D...

Lotteries vs. All-Pay Auctions in Fair and Biased Contests The form of contests for a single fixed prize can be determined by a designer who maximizes the contestants’ efforts. This paper establishes that, under common knowledge of the two asymmetric contestants’ prize valuations, a fair Tullock-type endogenously determined lottery is always superior to an all-pay-auction; it yields larger expe...

This paper studies strategic communication by an expert who is concerned about appearing to be well informed. The expert is assumed to observe a private signal with a simple and particularly tractable (“multiplicative linear”) structure. The quality of the expert’s information is evaluated on the basis of the advice given and the realized state of the world. In equilibrium of this reputational ...

This paper presents a model in which voters attempt to balance the ideological positions of their Senate representatives. Candidate positions are determined endogenously through a primary system. The median voter theorem is applied in each election to determine winning platforms based on voter preferences which may differ from their individual bliss points. Contrary to the original median voter...

During the last decade unicameral proposals have been put forward in fourteen US states. In this paper we analyze the effects of the proposed constitutional reforms, in a setting where decision making is subject to ‘hard time constraints’, and lawmakers face the opposing interests of a lobby and the electorate. We show that bicameralism might lead to a decline in the lawmakers’ bargaining power...

How is economic policy made? In this paper we study a key determinant of the answer to the question: lobbying by firms. Estimating a binary choice model of firm behavior, we find significant evidence for the idea that barriers to entry induce persistence in lobbying. The existence of these costs is further confirmed in studying how firms responded to a particular policy change: the expiration o...

We compare voluntary and compulsory voting in a Condorcet-type model in which voters have identical preferences but differential information. With voluntary voting, all equilibria involve sincere voting and positive participation. Thus, in contrast to situations with compulsory voting, there is no conflict between strategic and sincere behavior. When voting is costless, voluntary voting is welf...

A benchmark result in the political economy of taxation is that majority voting over a linear income tax schedule will result in an inefficiently high tax rate whenever the median voter has a below average income. The present paper examines the role of tax avoidance for this welfare assessment. We find that the inefficiency in the voting equilibrium is the lower, the higher the average level of...

I study the strategic incentives to coordinate votes in an assembly. Coalitions form voting blocs, acting as single players and affecting the policy outcome. In an assembly with two exogenous parties I show how the incentives to accept party discipline depend on the types of the agents, the sizes of the parties, and the rules the blocs use to aggregate preferences. In a game of fully endogenous...