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on Positive Political Economics |
| By: | Peter Calcagno (Department of Economics and Finance, College of Charleston); Christopher Westley (Jacksonville State University) |
| Abstract: | Recent events highlight primary type as an institutional variable that merits further examination in the economics literature on voter turnout. Using panel data for U.S. gubernatorial elections and treating primary type as a proxy for candidate deviation from the median voter, we test whether primary type changes voter turnout and whether that change is dominated by instrumental or expressive voting. The results show that states with more open primaries tend to have greater voter turnout in general elections and that this increase reflects the effect of open primaries on expressive voting. |
| Keywords: | voter turnout, voting hypotheses, voting |
| JEL: | D72 H11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:coc:wpaper:1&r=pol |
| By: | John Duggan; Yoji Sekiya (W. Allen Wallis Institute of Political Economy, 107 Harkness Hall, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627-0158) |
| Abstract: | We consider a general plurality voting game with multiple candidates, where voter preferences over candidates are exogenously given. In particular, we allow for arbitrary voter indierences, as may arise in voting subgames of citizen-candidate or locational models of elections. We prove that the voting game admits pure strategy equilibria in undominated strategies. The proof is constructive: we exhibit an algorithm, the “best winning deviation” algorithm, that produces such an equilibrium in finite time. A byproduct of the algorithm is a simple story for how voters might learn to coordinate on such an equilibrium. |
| Date: | 2008–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:roc:wallis:wp52&r=pol |
| By: | Ettore Damiano; Hao Li; Wing Suen |
| Abstract: | We study a model of collective decision making in which agents vote on the decision repeatedly until they agree, with the agents receiving no exogenous new information between two voting rounds but incurring a delay cost. Although preference conflict between the agents makes information aggregation impossible in a single round of voting, in the equilibrium of the repeated voting game agents are increasingly more willing to vote their private information after each disagreement. Information is efficiently aggregated within a finite number of rounds. As delay becomes less costly, agents are less willing to vote their private information, and efficient information aggregation takes longer. Even as the delay cost converges to zero, agents are strictly better off in the repeated voting game than in any single round game for moderate degrees of initial conflict. |
| Keywords: | repeated voting; gradual concessions; small delay cost |
| JEL: | C78 D82 |
| Date: | 2008–02–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tor:tecipa:tecipa-311&r=pol |
| By: | Liang, Che-Yuan (Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper first formulates a model of how the politicians in a local government collectively lobby to raise intergovernmental grants to their local government. The model identifies a relationship between council size and grants received. I then study this relationship empirically using the distribution of intergovernmental grants to the Swedish local governments. I use a fuzzy regression-discontinuity design that exploits a council size law to isolate exogenous variation in council size and find a large negative council size effect. This pattern provides indirect evidence for the occurrence of lobbying. The direction of the effect could be explained by free-riding incentives in individual lobbying effort contribution caused by a collective action problem in grant-raising among local government politicians. |
| Keywords: | lobbying; rent-seeking; collective action problem; group size paradox; local governments; intergovernmental grants; regression-discontinuity |
| JEL: | D72 D73 D78 H71 H72 H73 H77 |
| Date: | 2008–02–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:uunewp:2008_002&r=pol |
| By: | Audrey Hu (Universiteit van Amsterdam); Liang Zhou (Universiteit van Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | A government officials' propensity to corruption, or corruptibility, can be affected by his intertemporal preference over job benefits. Through a dynamic model of rent-seeking behavior, this paper examines how endogenously determined corruptibility changes with monitoring intensity, salary growth, and discount factor for expected future income. The paper illustrates credible circumstances in which the less an official values his job the more he seeks rents. This negative relation suggests a simple quasi-auction mechanism for selecting less corruptible public servants. While straightforward to implement, the quasi-auction also tends to circumvent the corrupt influence that is often associated with standard auction of jobs. |
| Keywords: | rent seeking; corruption; selection of officials; quasi-auction; sale of jobs |
| JEL: | D73 H11 D44 |
| Date: | 2007–12–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:uvatin:20070096&r=pol |
| By: | Christina R. Clark (St Paul University) |
| Abstract: | Ethnicity and citizenship issues have been among the contributing causes of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over the past decades. These identity issues are exacerbated by the large-scale migration of people to and from the DRC and neighbouring Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda, both historically and in the context of recent political violence. Using ethnographic data collected over a 15-month period, this paper explores Congolese young people’s self-identification vis-à-vis ethnicity and citizenship discourses in Kampala and Kyaka II refugee settlement, Uganda. In particular, research findings highlight the conceptual and practical implications of the territorialisation of ‘tribe’ and citizenship for migrants; the consequent conflation of ethnicity and nationality in migration contexts; a reinforced notion and assertion of ‘Congoleseness’ among refugee populations, even when this creates conflict with Ugandans; and, migrants’ limited opportunities for formal political participation. Understanding this political context from which Congolese refugees have fled, and to which they are returning and will return, is important in anticipating the peace and conflict implications of current Congolese migrations. |
| Date: | 2008–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hic:wpaper:38&r=pol |