Product differentiation when consumers may choose not to buy: Hotelling's convergence result revisited

Nous étudions le modèle spatial de différentiation d'Hotelling, mais au lieu de supposer que le marché est couvert quelles que soient les localisations des deux firmes, nous supposons qu'il existe une distance maximale (éventuellement infinie) qu'un consommateur est prêt à parcourir pour acheter le bien. Cette généralisation apparemment anodine des hypothèses d'Hotelling modifie complètement les résultats : le principe de "différentiation minimale" d'Hotelling n'est plus vérifié en général. A l'équilibre, les firmes s'engagent dans un processus de différentiation maximale, intermédiaire ou minimale, selon la forme de la distribution des positions des consommateurs et cette distance critique qu'un consommateur est prêt à parcourir pour acquérir le bien.

The political economy of xenophobia and distribution : the case of Denmark

Pour la première fois depuis de nombreuses années, un gouvernement conservateur a accédé au pouvoir au Danemark en 2001, en partie à cause de l'insatisfaction des électeurs quant aux politiques d'immigration menées par les socio-démocrates. On décrit la compétition électorale au Danemark comme portant esentiellement sur deux questions majeures -- la taille du secteur public et l'immigration -- et modélise l'équilibre politique à l'aide du concept de PUNE (Party Unanimity Nash Equilibrium), qui permet d'obtenir des équilibres dans des espaces politiques multi-dimensionnels lorsque les partis se forment de manière endogène. En calibrant le modèle sur des données électorales danoises, on montre que la xenophobie est susceptible de réduire la taille du secteur public danois d'un montant équivalent à la moitié de l'écart-type de la distribution de probabilité des opinions des électeurs danois concernant la taille idéale du secteur public.Equilibre politique;PUNE;Xénophobie;Redistribution

Ethnic diversity and attitudes towards redistribution: a review of the literature

We review the empirical literature that studies the effect of ethnic diversity on the welfare state and on individual attitudes. The outcome variables that we cover in the survey are on the one hand public spending, and on the other hand individual attitudes and behaviour, including charity spending. We also review the fast-growing literature that uses experiments to study the effects of ethnic diversity. Many of these studies have appeared since the pioneering survey by Alesina and La Ferrara (2005a), and have not been covered by a survey before. --redistribution,social security,welfare state,immigration,ethnic diversity,survey

Xenophobia and distribution in France : A politico-economic analysis.

Nous nous proposons d'étudier l'impact que le sentiment anti-immigrés de certains électeurs est susceptible d'avoir sur les propositions que font les partis en matière de politique économique. Nous modélisons la compétition électorale comme ayant lieu entre trois partis (la Gauche, la Droite et l'Extrême-Droite) et portant essentiellement sur deux dimensions (la taille du secteur public et l'immigration). Nous " calibrons " le modèle en utilisant des données d'enquêtes menées durant les années d'élections présidentielles 1988 et 2002, et montrons que l'influence des questions liées à l'immigration sur la taille du secteur public est loin d'être négligeable.Equilibre politique;Xénophobie;Immigration;Taille du secteur public

A communication game on electoral platforms

This paper proposes a game to study strategic communication on platforms by parties. Parties’ platforms have been chosen in a multidimensional policy space, but are imperfectly known by voters. Parties strategically decide the emphasis they put on the various issues, and thus the precision of the information they convey to voters on their position on each issue. The questions we address are the following: what are the equilibria of this communication game? How many issues will they address? Will parties talk about the same issues or not? Will they talk on issues that they "own" or not?

Immigration and natives' attitudes towards the welfare state: Evidence from the European Social Survey

Does immigration reduce natives' support for the welfare state? Evidence from the European Social Survey (2002/2003) suggests a more qualified relation. For Europe as a whole, there is only weak evidence of a negative association between the perceived presence of immigrants and natives' support for the welfare state. However, this weak average relationship masks considerable heterogeneity across countries. We distinguish two channels through which immigration could affect natives' support for the welfare state: a pure dislike of immigrants and concerns about the economic consequences of immigration. We find (1) that people who hold both negative views about immigrants generally tend to be less supportive of income redistribution, and (2) that they become even less supportive if they perceive a high share of immigrants in the population.welfare state ; immigration ; income redistribution ; reciprocity ; European Social Survey

A communication game on electoral platforms

This paper proposes a game to study strategic communication on platforms by parties. Parties’ platforms have been chosen in a multidimensional policy space, but are imperfectly known by voters. Parties strategically decide the emphasis they put on the various issues, and thus the precision of the information they convey to voters on their position on each issue. The questions we address are the following: what are the equilibria of this communication game? How many issues will they address? Will parties talk about the same issues or not? Will they talk on issues that they "own" or not

Ethnic diversity and attitudes towards redistribution : a review of the literature

We review the empirical literature that studies the effect of ethnic diversity on the welfare state and on individual attitudes. The outcome variables that we cover in the survey are on the one hand public spending, and on the other hand individual attitudes and behaviour, including charity spending. We also review the fast-growing literature that uses experiments to study the effects of ethnic diversity. Many of these studies have appeared since the pioneering survey by Alesina and La Ferrara (2005a), and have not been covered by a survey before

Influence Vs. Utility in the Evaluation of Voting Rules: A New Look at the Penrose Formula

In this paper, we clarify the relationship between influence/power measurement and utility measurement, the most popular two social objective criteria used when evaluating voting mechanisms. For one particular probabilistic model describing the preferences of the electorate, the so-called Impartial Culture (IC) model used by Banzhaf, the Penrose formula show that the two objectives coincide. The IC probabilistic model assumes that voter preferences are independent. In this article, we prove a general version of the Penrose formula, allowing for correlations in the electorate. We show that in that case, the two social objectives no longer coincide, and qualitative conclusions can be very different

Strategic Voting under Committee Approval: A Theory

We propose a theory of strategic voting under “Commitee Approval”: a fixed-sized commitee of M members is to be elected; each voter votes for as many candidates as she wants, and the M candidates with the most votes are elected. We assume that voter preferences are separable and that there exists a tiny probability that any vote might be misrecorded.We show that best responses involve voting by pairwise comparisons. Two candidates play a critical role: the weakest expected winner and the strongest expected loser. Expected winners are approved if and only if they are preferred to the strongest expected loser and expected losers are approved if and only if they are preferred to the weakest expected winner.At equilibrium, if any, a candidate is elected if and only if he is approved by at least half of the voters. With single-peaked preferences, an equilibrium always exists, in which the first M candidates according to the majority tournament relation are elected