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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Patrick Lederer |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we study voting rules on the interval domain, where the alternatives are arranged according to an externally given strict total order and voters report intervals of this order to indicate the alternatives they support. For this setting, we introduce and characterize the class of position-threshold rules, which compute a collective position of the voters with respect to every alternative and choose the left-most alternative whose collective position exceeds its threshold value. Our characterization of these rules mainly relies on reinforcement, a well-known population consistency condition, and robustness, a new axiom that restricts how the outcome is allowed to change when a voter removes the left-most or right-most alternative from his interval. Moreover, we characterize a generalization of the median rule to the interval domain, which selects the median of the endpoints of the voters' intervals. |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2509.04874 |
| By: | Pau Balart (Universitat de les Illes Balears); Agustín Casas (Universidad CUNEF); Gerard Doménech-Gironell (University of Padova); Orestis Troumpounis (Ca Foscari University of Venice) |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a formal model of electoral competition in which parties first choose their platforms and then allocate campaign resources that serve both persuasive and mobilization purposes. Voters, in turn, endogenously sort into ideological and impressionable types. We characterize a unique subgame perfect equilibrium and derive comparative statics that illustrate how the returns to mobilization and persuasion shape equilibrium platforms, campaign spending, and turnout. Among other results, we show that while campaign spending and polarization do not necessarily move in the same direction, turnout consistently increases with polarization. |
| Keywords: | electoral competition, campaign spending, polarization, mobilization |
| JEL: | D72 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aoz:wpaper:371 |
| By: | Santiago López Moskovits (Department of Economics, Universidad de San Andrés) |
| Abstract: | This thesis exploits the 2014–15 Flint Water Crisis as a quasi-natural experiment to examine how a severe public health and governance failure affects electoral participation. Leveraging precinct-level turnout data for gubernatorial and presidential elections in Genesee County (1998–2020), I employ an event-study difference-in differences design with fixed effects and controls for population and partisan composition. I find that, relative to neighboring precincts, voter turnout in Flint City declined by between 20 to 30% in the elections immediately following the crisis, a pattern that persists but loses statistical significance under “honest” bounds (Rambachan & Roth 2023) and synthetic DiD (Arkhangelsky et al. 2021) robustness checks. A parallel analysis of Republican vote share fails the pre-trend test, suggesting greater volatility in party support. These results highlight how a cute institutional failure can erode democratic engagement, even in voluntary voting systems. The findings contribute to the literature on political behavior by providing causal evidence that exogenous shocks to public trust and welfare can suppress turnout, with implications for debates on accountability and institutional resilience. |
| Keywords: | Voter turnout, corruption, ecological disasters, institutions |
| JEL: | H75 P10 P16 C23 |
| Date: | 2025–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sad:ypaper:16 |
| By: | Masahiko ASANO; Yoshikuni ONO; Yuya ENDO |
| Abstract: | Voters hold gender-based stereotypes of male and female candidates and often evaluate them on these grounds. This bias extends beyond policy areas to personality traits, with many voters stereotyping male candidates as tough and aggressive while expecting female candidates to be gentle, compassionate, and likable. Existing research indicates that female candidates adopt strategic behaviors during election campaigns, utilizing more positive and less negative emotive language than their male counterparts. This study examined whether these gender differences also manifest in candidates’ facial expressions during election campaigns. Our analysis of campaign pictures used by over 10, 000 candidates in Japan’s national elections from 1996 to 2024 revealed that female candidates smiled more often than their male counterparts. Moreover, female candidates received fewer votes when they did not smile in their campaign photos. These findings suggest that female candidates are strategically motivated to conform to gender-typical behaviors to appeal to voters and avoid electoral backlash. |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:25088 |
| By: | Stergios Skaperdas; Samarth Vaidya |
| Abstract: | We examine how political capitalism can develop within modern states that typically have many types of checks and balances. We first discuss how this can occur through various influence channels: government executive and regulatory agencies, legislators, litigation, the press, and the public sphere more generally. We then develop a model in which a group representing the public interest competes for policy implementation with a group that seeks private advantage. A non-venal decision maker makes the policy decision based on the lobbying of the two groups, which is partly restrained by an existing, status-quo policy and by the decision maker’s expertise. Because of free-rider problems but also because of a greater ability to develop a lobbying infrastructure, the group seeking private advantage has a better chance of implementing its policy even when the status quo policy is aligned with the public interest. Only when the decision maker has a high enough level of expertise and favorable status quo policy does the public interest group have a better chance of winning. |
| Keywords: | political capitalism, lobbying, rent-seeking, checks and balances, persuasion, political influence |
| JEL: | D72 D73 H11 P10 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12136 |
| By: | Miriam Malament (Department of Economics, Universidad de San Andrés) |
| Abstract: | Do symbolic penalties work? This paper provides causal evidence that even minimal, unenforced legal sanctions can influence civic behavior. I study a 2012 reform in Argentina that introduced optional voting for 16- to 17-year-olds, while voting from age 18 remained compulsory and formally subject to a small, unindexed fine of 50 pesos. Using a regression discontinuity design and administrative data from 15 national elections between 2015 and 2023, I find that turnout increases by about 20 percentage points at age 18, despite negligible enforcement. Complementary evidence from national survey data suggests this effect reflects expressive compliance: symbolic penalties act as normative signals, activating a sense of civic duty rather than deterring through material sanctions. The response is especially pronounced among lower-income and lower-education youth. These findings offer rare causal evidence that symbolic penalties can shape civic behavior by appealing to internalized civic norms rather than fear of punishment. |
| Keywords: | elections, compulsory voting, Argentina, regression discontinuity design |
| JEL: | D72 C31 K10 Z13 P16 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sad:ypaper:17 |
| By: | Natalia Jiménez-Jiménez (Universidad Pablo de Olavide); Elena Molis-Bañales (Universidad de Granada); Ángel Solano-García (Universidad de Granada) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we analyze theoretically and experimentally the relationship of tax avoidance and voting decisions over the size of taxation. We propose a basic model of redistributive politics in which there are two types of voters (skilled and unskilled workers) and two exogenous tax schemes to vote for. We design a laboratory experiment to test the results of the model. We consider a control treatment where tax avoidance is not feasible. In the main treatments, only the high skilled workers are allowed to avoid taxes with a fixed cost that varies in two different treatments. We also consider two additional treatments with explicit or implicit information about tax avoidance decisions. The impossibility of tax avoidance favors the support for the high tax rate. A sufficiently high cost of tax avoidance makes unskilled workers vote mostly for a low tax rate and skilled workers opt for almost no tax avoidance. Nevertheless, if tax avoidance is cheap enough, a higher than predicted proportion of unskilled workers still vote for the low tax rate, even in a high tax avoidance context. The only effect of information occurs when the cost of tax avoidance is low, and it entails a decrease in tax avoidance levels. Finally, regardless the tax avoidance cost, a higher rate of tax avoidance yields to a higher likelihood of unskilled workers voting for the high tax rate, and, vice versa, a higher probability of voting for the high tax rate results in a higher tax avoidance level. |
| Keywords: | tax avoidance; voting; income inequality; real-effort task; information. |
| JEL: | C92 D72 H26 H30 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pab:wpaper:25.07 |
| By: | Matilda Gettins; Lorenz Meister |
| Abstract: | Populist parties increasingly deploy narratives of social injustice to portray climate policy as elitist and unfair. This paper investigates how such narratives affect public attitudes toward populism and democratic institutions. We conduct a survey experiment with approximately 1, 600 respondents in Germany, exposing participants to three common narratives about the distributional costs of climate policy. Our findings show that the narrative emphasizing disproportionate burdens on low-income households significantly increases climate-populist attitudes and reduces satisfaction with democracy. These effects are particularly pronounced among low-income, East German, and conservative voters. By contrast, the narrative that companies can circumvent the cost of climate action fosters climate populism among left-leaning individuals. The results suggest that the framing of how the costs of climate policy are distributed strongly shapes its political acceptance and vulnerability to populist mobilization. |
| Keywords: | Climate policy, populism, narratives, distribution |
| JEL: | Q54 D72 Q58 H23 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp2139 |