We analyze a model of optimal gerrymandering where two parties receive a noisy signal about voter preferences from a continuous distribution and simultaneously design districts in di¤erent states and in which the median voter in a district determines the winner. The form of the optimal gerrymander involves “slices”of extreme right-wing voters that are paired with “slices” of left-wing voters, a...

Flows of US immigrants are concentrated at the extremes of the skill distribution. We develop a dynamic political economy model consistent with these observations. Individuals care about wages and the welfare of their children. Skill types are complementary in production. Voter support for immigration requires that the children of median-voter natives and of immigrants have suffi ciently dissim...

In this paper we investigate the relationship between inequality and the environment in a growing economy from a political economy perspective. We consider an endogenous growth economy, where growth generates pollution and a deterioration of the environment. Public expenditures may either be devoted to supporting growth or abating pollution. The decision over the public programs is done in a di...

While budgets for agri-environmental policy in OECD countries are rapidly increasing with current policy reforms, information about the locally varying demands for policies implemented at various levels of government remains scarce. In this study, a median voter framework is used to analyse the demand for landscape management services based on the expenditures of sub-federal governments for two...

Standard election models robustly predict that candidates should adopt moderate policies, especially if they value winning o¢ ce, and that this is good for voter welfare. Empirical polarization is therefore both inexplicable and troubling. This paper shows that if voter di¤erences re‡ect beliefs about an underlying truth variable, rather than idiosyncratic preferences, then polarization is the ...

We define secure implementation with partially honest agents in a social choice model and we show that strategy-proofness is a necessary and sufficient condition for it. This result offers a behavioral foundation for rectangularity ; and it remains valid even with only one partially honest agent. We apply the concept to a single-crossing voting environment, and we prove that it characterizes th...

We consider a model of elections in which two office-motivated candidates are uncertain about the location of the median voter’s ideal point, and in which candidates receive private signals about the location of the median prior to taking policy positions. Assuming signal spaces are finite, we show that there is at most one pure strategy equilibrium and give a sharp characterization, if one exi...

We analyze how voter ignorance effects competing candidates’ policy choices and election outcomes. We show that voter ignorance of policy positions has no effect in large elections provided voters know the preference distribution in the electorate. We then explore a model where voters are ignorant of policy positions and of the preference distribution. In that case limit equilibria (as the numb...

The paper studies political competition between endogenously formed parties. For this purpose, it develops a theoretical model in which party formation allows like-minded citizens to coordinate their political behavior in two ways. First, they can share the cost of running in a public election. Second, they can select a candidate for this election from their ranks, thereby committing to a polic...

Members of the Korean National Assembly post to Twitter, but we really do not know how or what they say on this increasingly popular social media vehicle. We test the Downsian spatial model by asking whether officials communicate in ways which differentiate themselves from members of the opposite party in order to provide a clear distinction when it comes time for individuals to vote. We also c...