The effect of candidate quality on electoral equilibrium: An experimental study

When two candidates of different quality compete in a one-dimensional policy space, the equilibrium outcomes are asymmetric and do not correspond to the median. There are three main effects. First, the better candidate adopts more centrist policies than the worse candidate. Second, the equilibrium is statistical, in the sense that it predicts a probability distribution of outcomes rather than a single degenerate outcome. Third, the equilibrium varies systematically with the level of uncertainty about the location of the median voter. We test these three predictions using laboratory experiments and find strong support for all three. We also observe some biases and show that they can be explained by quantal response equilibrium

A Model of Participatory Democracy: Understanding the Case of Porto Alegre

Participatory Democracy is a process of collective decision making that combines elements from both Direct and Representative Democracy: Citizens have the ultimate power to decide on policy and politicians assume the role of policy implementation. The aim of this paper is to understand how Participatory Democracy operates, and to study its implications over the behavior of citizens and politicians and over the final policy outcomes. To this end, we explore a formal model inspired in the experience of Participatory Budgeting implemented in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre and that builds on the model of meetings with costly participation by Osborne, Rosenthal, and Turner (2000).Participatory Democracy, Porto Alegre, assembly, legislator

"Spatial Competition Between Two Candidates of Different Quality: The Effects of Candidate Ideology and Private Information"

This paper examines competition in a spatial model of two-candidate elections, where one candidate enjoys a quality advantage over the other candidate. The candidates care about winning and also have policy preferences. There is two-dimensional private information. Candidate ideal points as well as their tradeoffs between policy preferences and winning are private information. The distribution of this two-dimensional type is common knowledge. The location of the median voter's ideal point is uncertain, with a distribution that is commonly known by both candidates. Pure strategy equilibria always exist in this model. We characterize the effects of increased uncertainty about the median voter, the effect of candidate policy preferences, and the effects of changes in the distribution of private information. We prove that the distribution of candidate policies approaches the mixed equilibrium of Aragones and Palfrey (2002a), when both candidates' weights on policy preferences go to zero.candidate quality, spatial competition, purification

Making Statements and Approval Voting

We assume that people have a need to make statements, and construct a model in which this need is the sole determinant of voting behavior. In this model, an individual selects a ballot that makes as close a statement as possible to her ideal point, where abstaining from voting is a possible (null) statement. We show that in such a model, a political system that adopts approval voting may be expected to enjoy a significantly higher rate of participation in elections than a comparable system with plurality rule.Approval voting, Abstention, Statements

Reputation and Rhetoric in Elections

We analyze conditions under which campaign rhetoric may affect the beliefs of the voters over what policy will be implemented by the winning candidate of an election. We develop a model of repeated elections with complete information in which candidates are purely ideological. We analyze an equilibrium in which voters' strategies involve a credible threat to punish candidates who renege of their campaign promises, and all campaign promises are believed by voters, and honored by candidates. We obtain that the degree to which promises are credible in equilibrium is an increasing function of the value of a candidate's reputation. We also show how the model can be extended so that rhetoric also signals candidate quality.Repeated Elections, Commitment, Reputation

Fact-Free Learning

People may be surprised by noticing certain regularities that hold in existing knowledge they have had for some time. That is, they may learn without getting new factual information. We argue that this can be partly explained by computational complexity. We show that, given a knowledge base, finding a small set of variables that obtain a certain value of R2 is computationally hard, in the sense that this term is used in computer science. We discuss some of the implications of this result and of fact-free learning in general.Learning, Behavioral Economics

Fact-Free Learning

People may be surprised by noticing certain regularities that hold in existing knowledge they have had for some time. That is, they may learn without getting new factual information. We argue that this can be partly explained by computational complexity. We show that, given a database, finding a small set of variables that obtain a certain value of R2 is computationally hard, in the sense that this term is used in computer science. We discuss some of the implications of this result and of fact-free learning in general.Learning, Behavioral Economics

Accuracy vs. Simplicity: A Complex Trade-Off

Inductive learning aims at finding general rules that hold true in a database. Targeted learning seeks rules for the predictions of the value of a variable based on the values of others, as in the case of linear or non-parametric regression analysis. Non-targeted learning finds regularities without a specific prediction goal. We model the product of non-targeted learning as rules that state that a certain phenomenon never happens, or that certain conditions necessitate another. For all types of rules, there is a trade-off between the rule's accuracy and its simplicity. Thus rule selection can be viewed as a choice problem, among pairs of degree of accuracy and degree of complexity. However, one cannot in general tell what is the feasible set in the accuracy-complexity space. Formally, we show that finding out whether a point belongs to this set is computationally hard. In particular, in the context of linear regression, finding a small set of variables that obtain a certain value of R2 is computationally hard. Computational complexity may explain why a person is not always aware of rules that, if asked, she would find valid. This, in turn, may explain why one can change other people's minds (opinions, beliefs) without providing new information.

A Dynamic Model of Multiparty Competition

We construct a dynamic voting model of three-party competition in order to capture the following facts: voters base their decision on past economic performance of the parties; parties and candidates have different objectives; finally, a candidate while in office can only have a small effect on the economy. The properties that characterize the electoral system are the following: each voter has a single vote to cast and there is a single-winner elected under plurality rule. Given the decision rule of the voters we have sincere voting and, because our voters do not consider the possibility of abstention, all votes are to be cast. We show the existence of equilibrium and the compatibility of the different objectives of parties and candidates. Our model may explain the emergence of ideoloties and shows that in multicandidate elections held under the plurality system, Hotelling's principle of maximum differentiation is no longer satisfied.