Social Conflict and Gradual Political Succession: An Illustrative Model

This paper studies the evolution of political institutions in the face of conflict. We examine institutional reform in a class of pivotal mechanisms — institutions that behave as if the resulting policy were determined by a “pivotal” decision maker drawn from the potential population of citizens and who holds full policy-making authority at the time. A rule-of-succession describes the process by which pivotal decision makers in period t + 1 are, themselves, chosen by pivotal decision makers in period t. Two sources of conflict - class conflict, arising from differences in wealth, and ideological conflict, arising from differences in preferences are examined. In each case, we characterize the unique Markov Perfect Equilibrium of the associated dynamic political game, and show that public decision-making authority evolves monotonically downward in wealth and upward in ideological predisposition toward the public good. We then examine rules-of-succession when ideology and wealth exhibit correlation.Social Conflict, Rule of Succession, Dynamic political game

The Folk Theorem in Dynastic Repeated Games

A canonical interpretation of an infinitely repeated game is that of a "dynastic" repeated game: a stage game repeatedly played by successive generations of finitely-lived players with dynastic preferences. These two models are in fact equivalent when the past history of play is observable to all players. In our model all players live one period and do not observe the history of play that takes place before their birth, but instead receive a private message from their immediate predecessors. Under very mild conditions, when players are sufficiently patient, all feasible payoff vectors (including those below the minmax) can be sustained as a Sequential Equilibrium of the dynastic repeated game with private communication. The result applies to any stage game for which the standard Folk Theorem yields a payoff set with a non-empty interior. Our results stem from the fact that, in equilibrium, a player may be unable to communicate effectively relevant information to his successor in the same dynasty. This, in turn implies that following some histories of play the players' equilibrium beliefs may violate "Inter-Generational Agreement."Dynastic Repeated Games, Private Communication, Folk Theorem

Who Is Against Immigration? A Cross-Country Investigation of Individual Attitudes towards Immigrants

This paper empirically analyzes both economic and non-economic determinants of attitudes towards immigrants, within nd across countries. The two individual-level survey data sets used, covering a wide range of developed and developing countries, make it possible to test for interactive effects between individual characteristics and country-level attributes. In particular, trade and labor-economics theories of labor markets predict that the correlation between proimmigration attitudes and individual skill should be related to the skill composition of natives relative to immigrants in the destination country. Skilled individuals should favor immigration in countries where natives are more skilled than immigrants and oppose it in the other countries. Results based on both direct and indirect measures of the relative skill composition of natives to immigrants are consistent with these predictions. Individual skill and pro-immigration attitudes are positively correlated in countries where the skill composition of natives relative to immigrants is high. Individuals with higher levels of skill are more likely to be pro-immigration in high per capita GDP countries and less likely in low per capita GDP countries. Non-economic variables also appear to be correlated with immigration attitudes but they donÂ’t seem to alter significantly the results on the economic explanations.Immigration Attitudes, International Migration, Political Economy