Even if it's not Bribery: The Case for Campaign Finance Reform

We develop a dynamic multidimensional signaling model of campaign finance in which candidates can signal their ability by enacting policy and/or by raising and spending campaign funds, both of which are costly. Our model departs from the existing literature in that candidates do not exchange policy influence for campaign contributions; rather, they must decide how to allocate their efforts between policymaking and fundraising. If high-ability candidates are better policymakers and better fundraisers, then they will raise and spend campaign funds even if voters care only about legislation. Campaign finance reform alleviates this phenomenon and improves voter welfare at the expense of politicians. Thus, we expect successful politicians to oppose true campaign finance reform. We also show that our model is consistent with findings in the empirical and theoretical campaign finance literature

Development (Paradigm) Failures

Over time the international development community has advocated various development paradigms, but countries following these paradigms have often performed poorly. I provide an explanation for this poor performance. In my model the political leader of a developing country chooses a policy and whether to implement it in an honest or corrupt manner. These choices affect domestic production and aid inflows. Production is high when productive capacity is high, and when the policy is appropriate in the country-specific circumstances and implemented honestly. Aid inflows are high when the policy is close to the paradigm. In equilibrium countries with low productive capacity and high corruption resulting from weak political institutions follow the paradigm more closely. Hence my model suggests that development paradigms have a tendency to fail because they are primarily followed by countries that would fail anyway.

A MultiDimensional Signaling Model of Campaign Finance

We develop a dynamic multi-dimensional signaling model of campaign finance in which candidates can signal their ability by enacting policy and/or raising and spending campaign funds, both of which are costly. Our model departs from the existing literature in that candidates do not need to exchange policy influence for campaign contributions, rather, they must decide how to allocate their efforts between policymaking and fundraising. If highability candidates are better policymakers and fundraisers then they will raise and spend campaign funds even if voters care only about legislation. Voters’ inability to reward or punish politicians based on past policy allows fundraising to be used to signal quality at the expense of voter welfare. Campaign finance reform alleviates this phenomenon and improves voter welfare at the expense of high-ability politicians. Thus, we expect successful politicians to oppose true campaign finance reform. We also show our model is consistent with findings in the empirical and theoretical campaign finance literature.Campaign Finance, Multi-Dimensional Signaling, Repeated Elections

Echo's body: play and representation in interactive music software

This paper examines Hans Georg Gadamer's theory of play (as it is presented in Truth and Method) and adapts it to the context of interactive music software. I aim to show that interactive technological environments afford play in ways which, because they relate to truth and selfhood, are cognitively and philosophically significant and are not 'merely' playful

Opportunism, Corruption and the Multinational Firm’s Mode of Entry

The paper models the boundaries of the multinational firm by looking at a simple trade-off between FDI (internal expansion with strong control rights) and debt (arm’s length expansion with loose control rights) in the context of contractual incompleteness due to institutional constraints in host countries, i.e. problems of commitment and, especially, corruption. It develops a theoretical approach to the two main types of corruption: petty bureaucratic corruption and high-level political corruption. The model predicts that multinational firms prefer FDI the weaker the ability to commit of the host country, while both types of corruption shift the trade-off marginally toward debt. Cross-country panel empirical evidence supports these conclusions.FDI, Debt, Multinational firms, Capital flows, Expropriation, Corruption.

Politicians lie, so do I

This research analyzed whether political leaders make people lie via priming experiments. Priming is a non-conscious and implicit memory effect in which exposure to one stimulus affects the response to another stimulus. Following priming theories, we proposed an innovative concept that people who perceive leaders to be dishonest (such as liar) are likely to lie themselves. We designed three experiments to analyze and critically discussed the potential influence of prime effect on lying behavior, through the prime effect of French political leaders (inc. general politicians, presidents and parties). Experiment 1 discovered that participants with non-politician-prime were less likely to lie (compared to politician-prime). Experiment 2A discovered that, compared to Hollande-prime, Sarkozy-prime led to lying behavior both in gravity (i.e. bigger lies) and frequency (i.e. lying more frequently). Experiment 2B discovered that Republicans-prime yielded an impact on more lying behavior, and Sarkozy-prime made such impact even stronger. Overall, the research findings suggest that lying can be triggered by external influencers such as leaders, presidents and politicians in the organizations. Our findings have provided valuable insights to organizational leaders and managers in their personnel management practice, especially in the intervention of lying behavior. Our findings also have offered new insights to explain non-conscious lying behavior

Opportunist politicians and the evolution ofelectoral competition

We study a unidimensional model of spatial competition between two parties with two types of politicians. The office oriented politicians, referred to as “opportunist” politicians, care only about the spoils of the office. The policy oriented politicians, referred to as “militant” politicians have ideological preferences on the policy space. In this framework, we compare a winner-take-all system, where all the spoils go to the winner, to a proportional system, where the spoils of office are split among the two parties proportionally to their share of the vote.We study the existence of short term political equilibria and then, within an evolutionary setup, the dynamics and stability of policies and of party membership decisions.Political competition. Opportunism. Downs.

Serving the Public Interest

We present a model of political selection in which voters elect a president from a set of candidates. We assume that some of the candidates are benevolent and that all voters prefer a benevolent president, i.e. a president who serves the public interest. Yet, political selection may fail in our model because voters cannot easily tell benevolent from egoistic candidates by observing their pre-election behavior. Egoistic types may strategically imitate benevolent types in the pre-election stage to extract rents once in office. We show that strategic imitation is less likely if the political system is likely to produce good governance. That is, if benevolent candidates are common, if the president has little discretionary power, and if the public sector is effective. We analyze the role of institutions like investigative media and re-election and show that they can improve or further hamper political selection, depending on the parameters of the political game.Political selection, elections, social preferences, political leadership