This paper probes the persuasive power of authoritarian propaganda on social media and compares it to a similar campaign by the opposition. We carried out a field experiment during the 2018 presidential elections in Russia by collecting voting intentions and then randomly advertising a pro- and...

We study pre-vote interactions in a committee that enacts a welfare-improving reform through voting. Committee members use decentralized promises contingent on the reform enactment to influence the vote outcome. Equilibrium promises prevent beneficial coalitional deviations and minimize total...

This paper explores the implications of voter loss-aversion and imperfect recall for the dynamics of electoral competition in a simple Downsian model of repeated elections. The interplay between the median voter’s reference point and political parties’ choice of platforms generates a dynamic...

This paper examines the effect of political favoritism on economic inequality in the short run and political polarization in the long run. We exploit the sudden death of an authoritarian leader - President Chiang Ching-Kuo of Taiwan - in 1988 to generate plausibly exogenous variation in...

This paper exploits a novel trial in Norwegian local elections in 2011 to provide empirical evidence on fiscal performance from lowering the minimum voting age from 18 to 16. Using a difference in differences research strategy, we find that this voting age change reduced the net operating...

The work of Vernon Smith that has come to be associated with the label “Humanomics” offers both substantive and methodological amendments to economic theory. On the substantive level, Humanomics offers a theory human agency that is distinct from both neoclassical and behavioral economics. We...

Sustaining future generations requires cooperation today. While individuals’ selfish interests threaten to undermine cooperation, social institutions can foster cooperation in intergenerational situations without ambiguity. However, in numerous settings, from climate change to the biodiversity...

We consider social decision-making situations where some voters may have a conflict of interest in some social alternatives/applicants to be ranked. Then the accountability of the collective decision process is essential. We extend the standard social welfare function to include the interest...

In an RDD study of the incumbency effect, observations somewhat away from the threshold separating winners and losers in an election are necessarily employed. We consider how incorporating the vote volatility of elections into a preferred index of electoral competitiveness or closeness, in...

Fiji’s 2018 National Elections was narrowly won by the FijiFirst Party (FFP), which formed government with twenty seven seats in Fiji’s fifty one seat parliament. On the other side, Fiji’s opposition was formed by the Social Liberal Democratic Party (SODELPA) and National Federation Party...