ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking最新文献

{"title":"Electoral Competition with Strategic Disclosure","authors":"Jacopo Bizzotto, Benjamin L. Solow","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3380533","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3380533","url":null,"abstract":"Recent developments in information and communication technologies allow candidates for office to engage in sophisticated messaging strategies to influence voter choice. We consider how access to different technologies influence the choice of policy platforms by candidates. We find that when candidates can target messages to specific voter groups, platforms are more likely to be inefficient. In particular, when candidates can run targeted campaigns, they commit to projects that benefit small groups even when the social cost of these projects outweigh their benefits. Our results are robust to negative advertising.","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130294351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Democracy Effect: A Weights-Based Identification Strategy","authors":"Pedro Dal Bó, A. Foster, Kenju Kamei","doi":"10.3386/W25724","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/W25724","url":null,"abstract":"\"Dal Bo, Foster and Putterman (2010) show experimentally that the effect of a policy may be greater when it is democratically selected than when it is exogenously imposed. In this paper we propose a new and simpler identification strategy to measure this democracy effect. We derive the distribution of the statistic of the democracy effect, and apply the new strategy to the data from Dal Bo, Foster and Putterman (2010) and data from a new real-effort experiment in which subjects’ payoffs do not depend on the effort of others. The new identification strategy is based on calculating the average behavior under democracy by weighting the behavior of each type of voter by its prevalence in the whole population (and not conditional on the vote outcome). We show that use of these weights eliminates selection effects under certain conditions. Application of this method to the data in Dal Bo, Foster and Putterman (2010) confirms the presence of the democracy effect in that experiment, but no such effect is found for the real-effort experiment.\"","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134004710","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Information Wants to Be Expensive, Not Free! And this is Bad for Justice, Democracy, the Economy","authors":"D. Zinnbauer","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3125074","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3125074","url":null,"abstract":"This essay is rather speculative. I argue that there is a very much overlooked characteristic of information goods, particularly digital information goods – that leads to a substantive, yet rarely discussed market failure with far-reaching consequences for important classes of information related to our education and research system, the judiciary, markets and democracy at large. \u0000 \u0000This overlooked feature is the positionality of many information goods. Positionality means that the utility of a specific information item for user x depends on the level of consumption of the same item by other users. Specific types of information are more valuable (or at times only valuable), when they are very exclusively available only to a small band of users. Or more intuitively, the fewer other people have a specific piece of information at a given point in time, the more valuable it may be to me. \u0000 \u0000Surprisingly, this simple characteristic is rarely discussed in the information literature or perhaps seems just too obvious to merit deeper analysis. Yet, as I will try to show, the positionality of information has far-reaching implications for the functioning of information markets and for the actual incentive systems of different players that all too often seem to be mis-construed as overly pro-social. And putting a focus on positionality also highlights the relevance and urgency for revisiting related regulatory policies, in order to ponder possible corrective interventions to tackle the ensuing informational imbalances and exclusive practices that positionality-oriented pricing structures for such information will generate. \u0000 \u0000The argument is developed as follows: The introductory chapter presents a number of quotes that are indicative of different perspectives on information dynamics and lays out the rationale for this essay. Chapter 2 briefly discusses the conventional view and analysis of market failures in information that serve as backdrop against which the argument developed here is set. Chapter 3 introduces the concept of positionality and argues for its applicability to many information markets. Chapter 4 traces the implications of informational positionality that primarily works through pricing for exclusivity across key societal institutions: research and education; the judicial system, markets and investment and finally politics and democratic decision-making. \u0000 \u0000The concept of information as positional goods offers a fresh perspective with regard to market failures and informational problems in all these areas. In addition, such a prism suggests to revisit the incentives involved and thus the overall political economy dynamics of how different stakeholders define and act upon their interests in these situations. As it turns out, commitment to openness and fair and inclusive information access may run less deep than is usually assumed. The analysis also suggests that many open government initiatives have only a limited remedial effect on these mark","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122368366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Демографическая динамика, ценностные ориентации и электоральное поведение (Demographic Dynamics, Value Orientations and Electoral Behavior)","authors":"A. Korotaev, Sergey Shulgin, I. Efremov, Y. Zinkina, I. Medvedev, D. Romanov","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3347095","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3347095","url":null,"abstract":"Russian Abstract: В работе показывается наличие связи между ценностными предпочтениями людей и их политическим поведением, а также связь между демографическими характеристиками общества и ценностными предпочтениями. В первой части работы представлен обзор работ по связи ценностных установок с демографическими факторами и электоральным поведением. Во второй части работы описывается процедура социологического исследования связи ценностных ориентаций и электорального поведения на выборах президента России 2018 г., а также электоральных предпочтений в последующий после выборов период. В третьей части работы дается анализ связи отдельных ценностных измерений с демографическими факторами и электоральным поведением, и электоральными предпочтениями в России. \u0000 \u0000English Abstract: The paper shows the existence of a relationship between people's value preferences and their political behavior, as well as the relationship between the demographic characteristics of society and value preferences. The first part of the work presents an overview of work on the relationship of value systems with demographic factors and electoral behavior. The second part of the work describes the procedure of a sociological study of the relationship of value orientations and electoral behavior in the presidential elections of Russia in 2018, as well as electoral preferences in the period after the elections. In the third part of the work, an analysis is made of the connection of individual value measurements with demographic factors and electoral behavior, and electoral preferences in Russia.","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129987086","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Electoral Impact of Wealth Redistribution. Evidence from the Italian Land Reform","authors":"Bruno Caprettini, L. Casaburi, Miriam Venturini","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3335191","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3335191","url":null,"abstract":"We study the political consequences of a major land reform in Italy, which split large estates and transferred land to small owners. Using a panel spatial regression discontinuity design, we show that the reform benefited the incumbent Christian Democrat party. The electoral benefits persist for four decades. We conjecture that the reform generated a cooperative political equilibrium in which voters in treated towns supported the candidates and the agenda of the incumbent party, and the party promoted the interests of these towns. Analysis of fiscal transfers, public sector employment, and referendum voting supports this hypothesis.","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120935874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Full Information Equivalence in Large Elections","authors":"Paulo Barelli, Sourav Bhattacharya, Lucas Siga","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3183959","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3183959","url":null,"abstract":"We study the problem of aggregating private information in elections with two or more alternatives for a large family of scoring rules. We introduce a feasibility condition, the \u0000 linear refinement condition, that characterizes when information can be aggregated asymptotically as the electorate grows large: there must exist a utility function, linear in distributions over signals, sharing the same top alternative as the primitive utility function. Our results complement the existing work where strong assumptions are imposed on the environment, and caution against potential false positives when too much structure is imposed.\u0000","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114812455","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Information Aggregation in Poisson-Elections","authors":"M. Ekmekci, S. Lauermann","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3305037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3305037","url":null,"abstract":"The modern Condorcet jury theorem states that under weak conditions, when voters have common interests, elections will aggregate information when the population is large, in any equilibrium. Here, we study the performance of large elections with population uncertainty. We find that the modern Condorcet jury theorem holds if and only if the expected number of voters is independent of the state. If the expected number of voters depends on the state, then additional equilibria exist in which information is not aggregated. The main driving force is that, everything else equal, voters are more likely to be pivotal if the population is small.","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124495320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Elections under Biased Candidate Endorsements — An Experimental Study","authors":"Junze Sun, A. Schram, R. Sloof","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3538831","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3538831","url":null,"abstract":"We study the impact of media bias on voters' behavior and election outcomes in a laboratory experiment. We model this interaction and derive the Bayesian Nash Equilibria. These predict for a single media that, ex-ante, an increased media bias affects candidates' winning probabilities non-monotonically and increases voter turnout. Introducing a second media outlet can affect the election outcome and voter turnout in either direction. We test these predictions in a laboratory experiment and find that both observed election outcomes and vote shares are well predicted. Voter turnout, however, is much less responsive to media bias than predicted. We show that subjects' observed behavior can be rationalized, to a substantial extent, by a quantal response equilibrium model combined with (a) distinct noise parameters for candidate choice and turnout decisions, (b) non-Bayesian belief updating, and (c) “partial competition neglect” (i.e., voters’ imperfect ability to infer closeness of elections from messages announced by media outlets).","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124672213","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On the Optimal Design of Lottery Contests","authors":"Qiang Fu, Zenan Wu","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3291874","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3291874","url":null,"abstract":"This paper develops a novel technique that allows us to characterize the optimal biased generalized lottery contest. In our baseline setting, we search for the optimal multiplicative biases for asymmetric Tullock contests — i.e., the weights placed on contestants' effort entries in the contest success function. Asymmetric Tullock contests, in general, have no closed-form solutions, which nullifies the usual implicit programming approach. We propose an alternative approach that allows us to circumvent this difficulty and characterize the optimum toward a wide array of objectives without solving for the equilibrium explicitly. The results of optimization exercises yield novel implications on the strategic nature of the contest game and its optimal design. In particular, we show that the conventional wisdom of leveling the playing field does not generally hold. Further, we relax restrictions on the functional forms, allow for enriched design space, and address more general objective functions. We show that our approach applies flexibly in a wide array of contexts and generates broad implications.","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116587518","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Evidence that Casting a Ballot Increases Political Trust: Isolating the Downstream Effects of Voting by Generating Exogenous Shocks in Turnout","authors":"V. Shineman","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3272681","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3272681","url":null,"abstract":"This study provides empirical evidence that the act of voting causes trust in government to increase. Because political participation is also affected by political trust, empirical identification is challenging. An intensive mobilization treatment randomly increases instrumental motivations to cast a ballot in a local election, successfully generating a substantial increase in turnout. The mobilization treatment is treated as an instrumental variable, in order to isolate exogenously-driven increases in participation. The analysis estimates the effects of casting a ballot on trust in government. The results suggest that the act of voting causes citizens to increase their trust in both the electoral system used on the ballot, and in the government elected in that election. Additional analyses suggest the effects of voting are strongest among citizens who also approve of the electoral outcome, and among citizens who were not previously registered to vote.","PeriodicalId":117783,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127232595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}