|
on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Anindya Bhattacharya; Francesco Ciardiello |
| Abstract: | In this paper we consider situations of (multidimensional) spatial majority voting. We analyze such situations having an even number (greater than or equal to 4) of voters and assume that each voter's preference over the set of policies is ``Euclidean": i.e., each voter has a most preferred ``ideal" policy and the voter's pay-offs from policies decrease as the (Euclidean) distance of the policies from the ideal policy goes up. We confine attention to voting situations for which the core has a single element belonging to the interior of the policy set. It is known that under conditions usual in this literature, this element of the core, generally, is not a Condorcet winner: i.e., there is at least one policy outside the core such that the core-policy cannot be reached from it by just one round of majority domination. We demonstrate that, however, under such conditions, starting from any policy in place, by a finite sequence of majority-dominations (we assume, implicitly, sincere voting) the policy in the core is reached eventually. |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2609.10029 |
| By: | Jesús Fernández-Villaverde (University of Pennsylvania, NBER, and CEPR); Carlos Sanz (Banco de Espana and CEMFI) |
| Abstract: | How socially distinct are competing political parties’ candidate pools? Since names encode cultural milieu, lineage, linguistic origin, and ancestry that standard socioeconomic variables miss, we measure social sorting across parties with names, predicting affiliation out of sample within municipality-years. Across more than 2.5 million local-election candidates, names pick the right-wing candidate in a random within-municipality pair 55.8% of the time in Spain and 56.5% in France. Given names alone do most of the work: around 55.0%. Under a stylized model of intergenerational transmission of political orientation, this translates to an implied gap of about 25 p.p. in parental naming propensities. The signal is stable in Spain but doubles in France by 2026. Within ideological families, names separate parties as sharply as across the right–left divide, even more so in France. The Spanish cleavage is linguistic and growing. The French one runs through names of immigrant origin and is strongest in large cities. |
| Keywords: | Names; Political selection; Social sorting; Political cleavages; Party candidates;Machine learning prediction |
| JEL: | D72 J15 Z13 C53 |
| Date: | 2026–09–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pen:papers:26-017 |
| By: | Ottone, Nicholas; Weiss, Amanda |
| Abstract: | From 1980 to 2000, the United States opened over 400 prisons, a rapid expansion of carceral capacity mirroring the punitive turn in public policy and public opinion. Yet few studies have examined the impact of prison construction on nearby residents and their political behavior. We develop a theoretical model tracing how prison openings affect economic, attitudinal, and electoral outcomes in surrounding communities. Using modern difference-in-difference methods and a novel county-level dataset covering forty years of prison openings, we find that prison construction decreases county-level vote share for Republican candidates, especially if Republicans represented the county during prison construction. Drawing on analyses of economic outcomes and prison bond measure support, we argue that voters sanction issue-owning Republican candidates for negative economic externalities and turn against funding for prisons. These findings challenge conventional wisdom about the political economy of prisons and have implications for how we understand contemporary expansions of carceral capacity. |
| Date: | 2026–09–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:dnwke_v1 |
| By: | José Javier Bercoff (UNT); Osvaldo Meloni (UNT) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines whether gender differences in the labor market explain the gender turnout gap in Argentine congressional elections. Using a unique dataset of actual voting records disaggregated by gender, derived from Argentina's historical system of gender-segregated polling stations, in use until 2007, we construct a provincial panel covering 23 districts and eight biennial congressional elections from 1993 to 2007. Unlike the overwhelming majority of studies in this literature, our data come not from surveys but from official electoral records, which avoids the well-known biases associated with self-reported turnout. The key explanatory variable is women's income as a share of total household income, a continuous measure of female economic autonomy at the provincial level. Estimated using two-way fixed effects with province and year effects and clustered standard errors and confirmed by an instrumental variables strategy that addresses endogeneity, we find that a higher female income share is robustly and positively associated with a larger female turnout advantage. The result is consistent with the resource and autonomy model of political participation: economic independence raises women's capacity and motivation to engage electorally. |
| Keywords: | Gender turnout gap, Women´s earnings, Compulsory voting, Argentina |
| JEL: | D72 J16 P16 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aoz:wpaper:407 |