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on Positive Political Economics |
| By: | David S. Ahny; Santiago Oliveros |
| Abstract: | Consider the problem of deciding a winner among three alternatives when voters have common values, but private information regarding the values of the alternatives. We compare approval voting with other scoring rules. For any finite electorate, the best equilibrium under approval voting is more efficient than either plurality rule or negative voting. If any scoring rule yields a sequence of equilibria that aggregates information in large elections, then approval voting must do so as well. |
| Date: | 2013–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esx:essedp:732&r=pol |
| By: | NAOI Megumi; OKAZAKI Tetsuji |
| Abstract: | How did the postwar newer democracies, whose governments faced pressure from both vested special interests and voters, achieve trade liberalization? Exploiting the case of trade liberalization in Japan in the 1960s, this paper addresses this question. Because the benefits and costs of trade liberalization are unequally distributed among the population, generating winners and losers, trade liberalization is inherently a highly political issue. The Japanese government and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leaders used two tactics to build a coalition of legislators for trade liberalization. While they used sequencing of liberalization to buy off support from the legislators of the Upper House, they relied on side payments for the legislators of the Lower House. This strategy choice was consistent with the difference in the sizes of the electoral districts between the Upper House and the Lower House. |
| Date: | 2013–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:13090&r=pol |
| By: | Éric Langlais; Marie Obidzinski |
| Abstract: | This paper revisits the issue of law enforcement and the design of monetary sanctions when the public law enforcer's incentives depart from those of a benevolent authority, which is the most frequent assumption made in the literature on crime deterrence. We rst consider the case of an elected enforcer. We nd that when the harm generated by offenses is quite small relative to the average private bene ts, equilibrium with weak enforcement/low sanction prevails. Instead, when the harm generated by offenses is high relative to the average private bene ts, it is the equilibrium with strong enforcement/high sanctions that prevails. Therefore, we provide an explanation for the empirical puzzle highlighted by Lin(2007): elected enforcers punish major (minor) crimes more (less) severely than the benevolent social planer. The case of an appointed enforcer prone to rent seeking is also considered. The monetary sanction under rent seeking is closer to the utilitarian level, as compared with the one under election. |
| Keywords: | law enforcement, deterrence, monetary sanctions, punishment, electoral competition, democracy, rent seeking, dictature |
| JEL: | D72 D73 H1 K14 K23 K4 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:drm:wpaper:2013-35&r=pol |
| By: | Antoine CAZALS; Alexandre SAUQUET |
| Abstract: | Is there a strategically beneficial time for political leaders to make international environmental commitments? Based on the political cycles theory we argue that leaders have incentives to delay costly ratification of international environmental agreements to the post-electoral period. However, the cost of participating in these agreements are often lower for developing countries, and they may benefit from indirect gains, which may make them more prone to ratifying in the pre-electoral period. These hypotheses are empirically assessed by studying the ratification process of 48 global environmental agreements censused in the ENTRI database from 1976 to 1999. We use a duration model in which time is measured on a daily basis, enabling us to precisely identify pre- and post-electoral periods -- a significant challenge in political cycles studies. Our investigation reveals the existence of political ratification cycles that are of substantial magnitude and non-linear over the pre- and post-electoral years. |
| Keywords: | International Environmental Agreements, Political cycles, Ratification, duration model |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdi:wpaper:1464&r=pol |
| By: | Santiago Oliveros; Felix Vardy |
| Abstract: | Political commentators warn that the fragmentation of the modern media landscape induces voters to withdraw into “information cocoons” and segregate along ideological lines. We show that the option to abstain breaks ideological segregation and generates “cross-over” in news consumption: voters with considerable leanings toward a candidate demand information that is less biased toward that candidate than voters who are more centrist. This non-monotonicity in the demand for slant makes voters’ ideologies non-recoverable from their choice of news media and generates disproportionate demand for media outlets that are centrist or only moderately biased. It also implies that polarization of the electorate may lead to ideological moderation in news consumption. Thus, our results cast doubt on the oft-prophesied, imminent demise of mainstream media and may help to explain recent empirical findings showing less ideological segregation in news consumption than predicted by extant theories. |
| Date: | 2013–06–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esx:essedp:734&r=pol |
| By: | Santiago Oliveros |
| Abstract: | We study aggregation of information when voters can collect information of different precision, with increased precision entailing an increasing marginal cost. In order to properly understand the incentives to collect information we introduce another dimension of heterogeneity: on top of the ideological dimension we allow for different levels of intensity in preferences. Contrary to traditional models of endogenous information, in equilibrium, there are voters collecting information of different qualities. After characterizing all symmetric Bayesian equilibria in pure strategies for arbitrary rules of election and fairly general distribution of types. We study information aggregation in symmetric electorates and show that information aggregates even when voters collect information of different qualities. |
| Date: | 2013–05–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esx:essedp:733&r=pol |
| By: | Matthew T. Cole (Department of Economics, Florida International University); Ivan Pastine (University College Dublin); Tuvana Pastine (National University of Ireland Maynooth) |
| Abstract: | In a campaign spending contest model, this paper investigates whether the sources of incumbency advantage are able to generate the observed pattern of campaign spending and incumbent reelection rates in US elections and assesses the degree to which campaign ?nance reform can mitigate the negative repercussions of incumbency advantage. The paper extends the existing literature by allowing the electoral bene?t to the candidate¡¯s visibility to be stochastic which is intuitively appealing since one dollar of extra spending should not take a candidate from a certain loser to a certain winner. Officeholders¡¯ ability to generate free media exposure alone is shown to be unable to match empirical regularities. Incumbent¡¯s superior fundraising efficiency is the key to matching the observed patterns. In contrast to previous literature, the model predicts that campaign ?nance legislation can help reduce the challenger scare-off effect of incumbency advantage. |
| Date: | 2013–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fiu:wpaper:1304&r=pol |
| By: | Ravanel, M. |
| Abstract: | In this paper, I study how the CEO's election can be biased if some directors in the board belong to the same network. I use a static Bayesian game. Directors want to elect the best candidate but they also want to vote for the winner. In that context, results show that, when no candidate is part of the network, boards with a network perform better in electing the right candidate. On the other hand, it becomes detrimental for stockholders if one candidate is part of the network. Indeed, compared to a situation where there are no interconnections between directors, the directors who are members of a network vote more often for the candidate they think is best, rather than for the one they think might win. The ones who are not part of the network follow their lead. Thus the network has power on the result of the election and therefore limits the power of the future CEO. |
| Keywords: | Networks, corporate governance. |
| JEL: | D71 G34 Z13 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bfr:banfra:459&r=pol |