A parameterization for a class of complete games with abstention

Voting games with abstention are voting systems in which players can cast not only yes and no vote, but are allowed to abstain. This paper centers on the structure of a class of complete games with abstention. We obtain, a parameterization that can be useful for enumerating these games, up to isomorphism. Indeed, any I-complete game is determined by a vector of matrices with non-negative integers entries. It also allows us determining whether a complete game with abstention is a strongly weighted (3, 2) game or not, and for other purposes of interest in game theory.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Participation Rights and Mechanism Design

This paper is concerned with the procedural aspects of collective choice and the impact of the parties' participation rights on the optimal mechanism. We find that the mechanism designer generally benefits from the selective engagement of the agents-the exclusion of some agent-types from the choice process. We show that optimization of mechanisms with voluntary participation involves two mutually dependent instruments: the scope of the agents' engagement, and the functional form of the social choice function. The benefits of selective engagement, as well as two optimization methodologies, are illustrated on principal-agent models. We find that the participation constraint is redundant and generally leads tot suboptimal mechanisms. Contrary to its general interpretation, this restriction does not reflect the voluntary aspect of the agents' participation. Rather, it gives them an additional entitlement: to force their involvement in the collective choice. We formulate a free-exit constraint that is devoid of incentives and fully accounts for the voluntary aspect of participation. It also leads to an equivalent representation of incentive-compatibility that explicates incentives and specifies the feasibility of a mechanism. Key words: Participation rights, voluntary participation, economics of information, incentives, incentive compatibility, principal-agent model.

Publicacions científiques de l'Escola Politècnica Superior d'Enginyeria de Manresa (EPSEM) curs 2018-2019

Aquest informe recull les publicacions del personal docent i investigador de l'Escola Politècnica Superior d'Enginyeria de Manresa (EPSEM) durant el curs acadèmic 2018-2019. Informació extreta de Futur.upc.edu, i analitzada a Scopus.Postprint (published version

Making Sense of Unexpected Preferences

This dissertation includes three papers using quantitative models to sensibly describe what kinds of preferences political actors will or actually do hold when existing theory offers no insight. The first two papers use evolutionary game theory to predict ways in which politicians, artificially selected on the basis of good performance to remain in office, will in the long run diverge from instrumental rationality as ordinarily assumed in game theory. The first sets out a general principle for producing models of preference evolution in games as political models, namely, that the information about opponent preferences necessary for evolution of non-rational preferences comes from opponents\u27 previous plays, and applies it to two simple games. The second uses the same principles in more detail on a bargaining game that models the plea negotiations between a prosecutor and a defense attorney, leading to a conclusion that failure to learn from setbacks during a trial is an evolutionarily favored trait among prosecutors. The third paper addresses the ideological preferences of Supreme Court justices, which existing statistical models do not effectively compare to those of elected officials since the two groups never vote on the same items, by identifying a set of political actors with whom both groups commonly interact: organized interest groups who vote on Supreme Court cases with amicus curiae briefs and on electoral candidates using campaign donations

Essays on Strategic Voting

This dissertation investigates strategic voting from two perspectives. The second chapter studies a theory of electoral competition in the presence of strategic forward-looking voters while the third chapter experimentally tests a rational voter model under alternative voting institutions that may be employed in jury trials. In the second chapter, I study a spatial model of two-party electoral competition in which the final policy outcome can be different from electoral promises. The policy outcome depends in part on electoral promise, but also reflects the bargaining process between the winning and losing party whose outcome can be anticipated by strategic forward-looking voters. Unlike the prediction of the Median Voter Theorem which holds with the coincidence of electoral promises and policy outcomes, I find that parties have incentives to distinguish themselves from one another in the election with the consideration of policy concession that might result from post-electoral bargaining. In the third chapter, I report on an experiment comparing compulsory and voluntary voting mechanisms. Theory predicts that these different mechanisms have important implications for strategic decisions in terms of both voting and abstention, and I find strong support for these theoretical predictions in the experimental data. Voters are able to adapt their strategic voting behavior or their participation decisions to the different voting mechanisms in such a way as to make the efficiency differences between these mechanisms negligible. I argue that this finding may account for the co-existence of these two voting mechanisms in nature. In conclusion, I give a brief description of a way to extend the experimental study in the third chapter by considering alternative mechanisms to obtain private information relevant to voting decisions

Learning competitive equilibrium in laboratory exchange economies

A laboratory market for two goods is instituted to examine the hypothesis that individuals will eventually coordinate on the induced competitive equilibrium. The mechanism for exchange strongly restricts the space of agent actions, facilitating the identification of decision rules. Evidence for learning competitive equilibrium is mixed due to strong heterogeneity in decision making. Some subjects forego immediately available gains when they expect the market to move in a more favorable direction, a condition necessary for coordinating on the competitive outcome. However, a majority do not, and many are content to satisfice, though the means to do better was reasonably transparent

Whither Political Economy? Theories, Facts and Issues

In this paper, I discuss recent developments in political economy. By focusing on the microeconomic side of the discipline, I present an overview of current research on four of the fundamental institutions of a political economy: voters, politicians, parties and governments. For each of these topics, I identify and discuss some of the salient questions that have been posed and addressed in the literature, present some stylized models and examples, and summarize the main theoretical findings. Furthermore, I describe the available data, review the relevant empirical evidence, and discuss some of the challenges for empirical research in political economy.microeconomics of political economy, voters, politicians, parties, governments