Large Electorates and Decisive Minorities

Campbell, Colin

doi:10.1086/250094

Cited by 63 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 6 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…In each regime we characterize a unique type-symmetric Bayesian Nash Equilibrium (BNE) in which all citizens randomize between voting for their preferred alternative and abstaining. 7 We further show that this is the only behavior consistent with a symmetric BNE of the voting game when the population of citizens is sufficiently large.…”

mentioning

confidence: 54%

“…This gives rise to a unique equilibrium in which only citizens with costs below an endogenous threshold vote. 11 More recent papers in the private-values costly-voting paradigm include Campbell (1999) and Borgers (2004). 12 Campbell (1999) studies a model in which members of the minority group possess stronger political preferences (higher values or lower costs) than members of the majority.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Public information and electoral bias

Taylor

Yıldırım

2010

Games and Economic Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We present a theory of strategic voting that predicts (1) elections are more likely to be close, and (2) voter turnout is more likely to be high when citizens possess better public information about the composition of the electorate. These findings are disturbing because they suggest that providing more information to potential voters about aggregate political preferences (e.g., through pre-election polls, political stock markets, or expert forecasts) may actually undermine the democratic process. We analyze both small and large elections. We show that if the distribution of preferences is common knowledge, then the unique type-symmetric equilibrium leads to a stark neutrality result in which the probability that either alternative wins the election is 1 2 . We demonstrate that this neutrality result is endemic to large elections. By contrast, when citizens are ignorant about the distribution of preferences, the majority is more likely to win the election and expected voter turnout is lower. Welfare is, therefore, unambiguously higher when citizens possess less information about the distribution of preferences.JEL Classifications: C72, D72, D82.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 54%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Public information and electoral bias

Taylor

Yıldırım

2010

Games and Economic Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Valuations were drawn randomly by the computer independently for each subject and could be any integer value between −100 and 100 (excluding 0), 8 with equal probability. Each subject was shown his valuation for 5 In addition to our core treatments, we ran one session at UCLA with n = 2, T = 2 but B 0 i = 3 for all i. We discuss it separately, later in the text.…”

Section: Experimental Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

An experimental study of storable votes

Casella

Gelman

Palfrey

2006

Games and Economic Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The storable votes mechanism is a method of voting for committees that meet periodically to consider a series of binary decisions. Each member is allocated a fixed budget of votes to be cast as desired over the multiple decisions. Voters are induced to spend more votes on those decisions that matter to them most, shifting the ex ante probability of winning away from decisions they value less and towards decisions they value more, typically generating welfare gains over standard majority voting with non-storable votes. The equilibrium strategies have a very intuitive feature-the number of votes cast must be monotonic in the voter's intensity of preferences-but are otherwise difficult to calculate, raising questions of practical implementation. In our experiments, realized efficiency levels were remarkably close to theoretical equilibrium predictions, while subjects adopted monotonic but off-equilibrium strategies. We are lead to conclude that concerns about the complexity of the game may have limited practical relevance.

show abstract

“…We assume that the political business cycles where politicians adopt short-term policies instead of long-term policies before elections thus leading to upturns before and downturns after elections, 5 or investments in infrastructure requiring a temporary cutdown on consumption but producing positive returns at a later stage.…”

Section: Model and Assumptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular, we assume To simplify the exposition we use 5 The literature on political business cycles started with Nordhaus (1975) and Ben-Porath (1975) and was expanded to ideological business cycles by Hibbs (1977). In Rogoff (1990), Cukierman and Meltzer (1986), Hibbs (1992), Persson and Tabellini (1993), the theory has been adapted to incorporate rational expectations and information asymmetries.…”

Section: Model and Assumptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competition of Politicians for Incentive Contracts and Elections

Gersbach

2004

Public Choice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in COMPETITION OF POLITICIANS FOR INCENTIVE CONTRACTS AND ELECTIONS AbstractWhen politicians have lower discount factors than voters, democratic elections cannot sufficiently motivate politicians to undertake long-term socially beneficial projects. When politicians can offer incentive contracts which become effective upon reelection, the hierarchy of contracts and elections can alleviate such inefficient decision-making in politics. This mechanism still works if the public cannot commit itself to a reelection scheme or if the public is unsure about the politicians' time preferences. In the non-commitment case, incentive contracts may need to include a golden parachute clause.

show abstract

Large Electorates and Decisive Minorities

Cited by 63 publications

References 6 publications

Public information and electoral bias

Public information and electoral bias

An experimental study of storable votes

Competition of Politicians for Incentive Contracts and Elections

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About