It takes two : an explanation of the democratic peace.

In this paper, we provide an explanation of the democratic peace hypothesis, i.e., the observation that democracies rarely fight one another. We show that in the presence of information asymmetries and strategic complements, the strategic interaction between two democracies differs from any other dyad. In our model, two democracies induce the highest probability of peaceful resolution of conflicts. But it takes two for peace; one democracy involved in a conflict does not necessarily increases the probability of a peaceful resolution compared to a conflict between two non-democratic regimes.

Religious Organizations

We propose a model of religious organizations which relies on the ability of such organi-zations and personal utility shocks. We show how religious organizations arise endogenously and characterize their features. Specifically, we find that members of the religious organization share similar beliefs and are more likely to cooperate with one another in social interactions. We identify a "spiritual" as well as a "material" payoff for members of the religious organization. Our results explain and shed light on empirical phenomena such as the effects of secularization and economic development on religious beliefs and participation, the relation between the size of the religion and the intensity of its members’ beliefs, religious segregation and religious conflicts.Economics of Religion, Religion, Organizations, Beliefs

Multidimentional Cheap Talk

In this paper, we extend the cheap talk model of Crawford and Sobel (1982) to a multidimensional state space. We provide a characterization of informative equilibria. Most importantly, we prove for a generic family of distribution functions, that no information transmission is feasible when the conflict between the sender and the receiver is too large. Thus, adding more dimensions cannot improve upon information revelation when interests are too divergentCheap Talk

Coalition formation under power relations

We analyze the structure of a society driven by power relations. Our model has an exogenous power relation over the set of coalitions of agents. Agents determine the social order by forming coalitions. The power relations determine the ranking of agents in society for any social order. We study a cooperative game in partition function form and introduce a solution concept, the stable social order, which exists and includes the core. We investigate a refinement, the strongly stable social order, which incorporates a notion of robustness to variable power relations. We provide a complete characterization of strongly stable social orders.Power, coalition formation, stability

Over-55s and men dominate online Brexit debate – and they’re persuasive, too

What would happen if you got a representative sample of the UK online to talk about the EU referendum? What would they say? What would the arguments be? Which side would be more convincing? Ronny Razin and his research team used the online platform Voxter to analyse discussion data using statistical demographic analysis. They found striking differences between women and men and between different age groups, and a swerve to Leave among participants

Group Decision-Making in the Shadow of Disagreement

A model of group decision-making is studied, in which one of two alternatives must be chosen. While group members differ in their valuations of the alternatives, everybody prefers some alternative to disagreement. Our model is distinguished by three features: private information regarding valuations, varying intensities in the preference for one out-come over the other, and the option to declare neutrality in order to avoid disagreement. We uncover a variant on the “tyranny of the majority": there is always an equilibrium in which the majority is more aggressive in pushing its alternative, thus enforcing their will via both numbers and voice. However, under very general conditions an aggressive minority equilibrium inevitably makes an appearance, provided that the group is large enough. This equilibrium displays a “tyranny of the minority": it is always true that the increased aggression of the minority more than compensates for smaller number, leading to the minority outcome being implemented with larger probability than the majority alternative. In all cases the option to remain neutral ensures that the probability of disagreement is bounded away from one (as group size changes), regardless of the supermajority value needed for agreement, as long as it is not unanimity.Collective decision-making, Groups, Disagreements, Decision rules

Does polarisation of opinions lead to polarisation of platforms?: the case of correlation neglect

In this paper we question the common wisdom that more polarised voters' opinions imply larger policy polarisation. We analyse a voting model in which the source of the polarisation in voters' opinions is correlation neglect, that is, voters neglect the correlation in their information sources. Our main result shows that such polarisation in opinions does not necessarily translate to policy polarisation; when the electoral system is not too competitive (that is, when there is some aggregate noise in the elections outcome), then voters with correlation neglect may induce lower levels of policy polarisation compared with rational electorates

From Thought to Practice: Appropriation and Endogenous Market Structure with Imperfect Intellectual Property Rights

We address the problem faced by innovators who have an idea for a marketable product but must hire employees to bring the product to the market. Information leakage implies that newly hired employees become informed of the idea and may attempt to bring the product to the market themselves. We develop a bargaining model to analyze this situation. In this model, employees rents endogenously reflect the bargaining power vis-a-vis the firm which is due to the knowledge of the information. The model has a unique symmetric equilibrium in which the innovator appropriates a sizable share of the surplus despite the absence of property rights for ideas. We show that this share stays bounded away from zero even as the number of agents required in the development grows to infinity. We also derive the conditions under which monopoly or competition arise on the product market. We find that when the degree of potential competition on the product market is high enough, a monopoly is generated by hiring all potential competitors within the same firm. Finally, the link between intellectual property rights enforcement and industry performance is explored, and normative implications are derived