How many sorting equilibria are there (generically)?

It is shown that in a generic two-jurisdiction model of the type introduced by Caplin and Nalebuff (1997), the number of sorting equilibria (with jurisdictions providing distinct policies) is finite and even.

When the State is Untrustworthy: Public Finance and Private Banking in Porfirian Mexico

All sovereign governments face a commitment problem: how can they promise to honor their own agreements? The standard solutions involve reputation or political institutions capable of tying the hands of the government. Mexico's government in the 1880s used neither solution. It compensated its creditors by enabling them to extract rents from the rest of the economy. These rents came through special privileges over banking services and the right to administer federal taxes. Returns were extremely high: as long as creditors believed that the government would refrain from confiscating all their assets (let alone repaying their debts) less than twice a decade, they would break even.

Anonymity in Large Societies

In a social choice model with an infinite number of agents, there may occur "equal size" coalitions that a preference aggregation rule should treat in the same manner. We introduce an axiom of equal treatment with respect to a measure of coalition size and explore its interaction with common axioms of social choice. We show that, provided the measure space is sufficiently rich in coalitions of the same measure, the new axiom is the natural extension of the concept of anonymity, and in particular plays a similar role in the characterization of preference aggregation rules.

Group Decision-Making and Voting in Ultimatum Bargaining: An Experimental Study

Many rent-sharing decisions in a society result from a bargaining process between groups of individuals (such as between the executive and the legislative branches of government, between legislative factions, between corporate management and shareholders, etc.). We conduct a laboratory study of the effect of different voting procedures on group decision-making in the context of ultimatum bargaining. Earlier studies have suggested that when the bargaining game is played by unstructured groups of agents, rather than by individuals, the division of the payoff is substantially affected in favor of the ultimatum-proposers. Our theoretical arguments suggest that one explanation for this could be implicit voting rules within groups. We explicitly structure the group decision-making as voting and study the impact of different voting rules on the bargaining outcome. The observed responder behavior is consistent with preferences depending solely on payoff distribution. Furthermore, we observe that proposers react in an expected manner to changes in voting rule in the responder group.Bargaining games, group decision making and experimental design.

Group Decision-Making in Ultimatum Bargaining: An Experimental Study

Many rent-sharing decisions in a society are result from a bargaining process between groups of individuals (such as between the executive and the legislative branches of government, between legislative factions, between corporate management and shareholders, etc.). The purpose of this work is to conduct a laboratory study of the effect of different voting procedures on group decision-making in the context of ultimatum bargaining. An earlier study (Bornstein and Yaniv, [2]) has suggested that when the bargaining game is played by unstructured groups of agents, rather than by individuals, the division of the payoff is substantially affected in favor of the ultimatum-proposers. Our theoretical arguments suggest that one explanation for this could be implicit voting rules within groups. We propose to explicitly structure the group decision-making as voting and study the impact of different voting rules on the bargaining outcome.Bargaining games, group decision making and experimental design

Group Decision-Making and Voting in Ultimatum Bargaining: An Experimental Study

Many rent-sharing decisions in a society result from a bargaining process between groups of individuals (such as between the executive and the legislative branches of government, between legislative factions, between corporate management and shareholders, etc.). We conduct a laboratory study of the effect of different voting procedures on group decision-making in the context of ultimatum bargaining. Earlier studies have suggested that when the bargaining game is played by unstructured groups of agents, rather than by individuals, the division of the payoff is substantially affected in favor of the ultimatum-proposers. Our theoretical arguments suggest that one explanation for this could be implicit voting rules within groups. We explicitly structure the group decision-making as voting and study the impact of different voting rules on the bargaining outcome. The observed responder behavior is consistent with preferences depending solely on payoff distribution. Furthermore, we observe that proposers react in an expected manner to changes in voting rule in the responder group.Bargaining games, group decision making and experimental design.

Endogenous platforms : the case of many parties.

We analyze existence of equilibrium in a one-dimensional model of endogenous party platforms and more than two parties. The platforms proposed by parties depend on their membership composition. The policy implemented is a function of the different proposals and the vote distribution among such proposals. It is shown that if voters are sincere there is always an equilibrium regardless of the number of parties. In the case of strategic voting behavior, existence of equilibrium can be shown provided a subadditivity condition on the outcome function holds.

A model of endogenous political party platforms.

We develop a model of endogenous party platform formation in a multidimensional policy space. Party platforms depend on the composition of the parties’ primary electorate. The overall social outcome is taken to be a weighted average of party platforms and individuals vote strategically. Equilibrium is defined to obtain when no group of voters can shift the social outcome in its favor by deviating and the party platforms are consistent with their electorate. We provide sufficient conditions for existence of equilibria.Endogenous party formation; Multidimensional policy space;

A MODEL OF ENDOGENOUS POLITICAL PARTY PLATFORMS

We develop a model of endogenous party platform formation in a multidimensional policy space. Party platforms depend on the composition of the parties? primary electorate. The overall social outcome is taken to be a weighted average of party platforms and individuals vote strategically. Equilibrium is defined to obtain when no group of voters can shift the social outcome in its favor by deviating and the party platforms are consistent with their electorate. We provide sufficient conditions for existence and study the robustness properties of the sorting equilibria.Political Economy, Endogenous Party Formation, Multimensional Space.