United We Vote

This paper studies the advantages that a coalition of agents obtains by forming a voting bloc to pool their votes and cast them all together. We identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for an agent to benefit from the formation of the voting bloc, both if the agent is a member of the bloc and if the agent is not part of the bloc. We also determine whether individual agents prefer to participate in or step out of the bloc, and we find the different optimal internal voting rules that aggregate preferences within the coalition.Voting bloc, Coalition formation, Voting rule

The Foundations of Spatial Preferences

Utility representation; spatial models; multidimensional preferences; spatial representation; norms; city block preferences

Cohesion, Insurance and Redistribution

Governments use redistributive policies to favor relatively unproductive economic sectors. Traditional economic wisdom teaches that the government should instead buy out the agents in these sectors, and let them relocate to more productive sectors. We show that redistribution to a sector whose agents have highly correlated incomes generates an insurance value. Taking this insurance value into account, a buy-out is not sufficient to compensate the agents in the sector for relocating. In fact, it may be efficient for the government to sustain agents in an activity that, while less productive, is subject to correlated income shocks. US data suggests that indeed, sectors that receive transfers are subject to more correlated income shocks than others

Is the Status Quo Relevant in a Representative Democracy?

This work studies the effect of the value of the status quo in the candidates’ decisions and policy outcomes in a representative democracy with endogenous candidates. Following the citizen-candidate model due to Besley and Coate (1997) we show, for a unidimensional policy issue and for both an odd and even number of citizens, that some equilibria only hold for certain values of the status quo policy. In particular we find that a moderate status quo rules out equilibrium outcomes in which there is an uncontested candidate and that two-candidate equilibria exist more generally when the number of citizens is even

On the Efficiency of Partial Information in Elections

We study the relation between the electorate's information about candidates' policy platforms during an election, and the subsequent provision of inefficient local public goods (pork) by the winning candidate. More information does not lead to better outcomes. We show that the efficient outcome in which no candidate proposes to provide any inefficient good is sustained in equilibrium only if voters are not well informed. If the electorate is well informed, electoral competition leads candidates to provide inefficient pork in all equilibria. We show that this result is robust even if candidates care about efficiency.Elections, information, inefficiency, pork, campaigns

Citizen Candidates Under Uncertainty

In this paper we make two contributions to the growing literature on "citizen-candidate" models of representative democracy. First, we add uncertainty about the total vote count. We show that in a society with a large electorate, where the outcome of the election is uncertain and where winning candidates receive a large reward from holding office, there will be a two-candidate equilibrium and no equilibria with a single candidate. Second, we introduce a new concept of equilibrium, which we term "sincere-strategic," and we show that with this refinement, the two equilibrium candidates will not be too extreme, one will lean to the left and the other one to the right

Voting Blocs, Coalitions and Parties

In this paper I study the strategic implications of coalition formation in an assembly. A coalition forms a voting bloc to coordinate the voting behavior of its members, acting as a single player and affecting the policy outcome. I prove that there exist stable endogenous voting bloc structures and in an assembly with two parties I show how the incentives to form a bloc depend on the types of the agents, the sizes of the parties, and the rules the blocs use to aggregate their preferences. I also provide an empirical application of the model to the US Supreme Court and I show that justices face a strategic incentive to coalesce into voting blocs

Michigan Redistricting Draft Map Analysis

Michigan has embarked on an historic redrawing of boundaries for its 13 U.S. House, 38 Senate and 110 House districts. Redistricting was entrusted this year to 13 members of the Michigan Independent Redistricting Commission (MICRC) randomly selected from a pool of qualified applicants.This report provides a quantitative analysis of the collaborative Draft Proposed maps, as those maps were collaboratively drawn by the MICRC and released on Oct. 11, 2021. For the collaborative maps, the Commission voted to release four congressional maps, three Michigan Senate maps, and three Michigan House maps. These Draft Proposed maps will be subject to a round of public hearings to be conducted around the state from Wednesday, Oct. 20 to Wednesday, Oct. 27.In this report, the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University analyzes these 10 collaborative Draft Proposed maps

An Explanation of Inefficient Redistribution: Transfers Insure Cohesive groups

Redistributive policies often sustain inefficient economic sectors. Economists routinely argue that governments should let the sectors collapse, and compensate the affected agents. We explain why governments may instead prefer the inefficient redistribution. If income shocks in a given sector are more correlated than in the rest of the economy, and redistribution is related to individuals’ income, then by sustaining a sector, the government is also providing its agents with insurance. The agents would lose this insurance if they relocate to another sector. Government transfers to sectors with correlated in- comes are therefore worth more than their monetary value. A preliminary analysis of the publicly-available data suggests that indeed agents in sectors that receive transfers are subject to more correlated income shocks. Our results imply that buying out inefficient sectors may not be the second-best policy when agents cannot fully insure themselves (markets are incomplete)