Showing 1 - 10 of 4,690
This paper examines the importance of electoral rules for legislators behavior. The German electoral system includes a mechanism which assigns whether legislators are elected under the first-past-the-post (FPTP), or the proportional representation (PR) electoral rule. Using this institution, we...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011408941
In this paper we introduce flexible majority decision rules where the size of the majority depends on the proposal made by the agenda setter. Flexible majority rules can mitigate the disadvantages of democracies in the provision of public projects. In many cases, the combination of the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011398428
Geographic representation is an important consideration in candidate nominations, even under closed-list proportional representation (PR), and may even matter for distributive policy outcomes. However, since nominations are determined strategically, the causal effects of local representation are...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011846263
A fat and a healthy good provide immediate gratification, and cause health costs or benefits in the long run, which are misperceived. Additionally, the fat good (healthy good) increases (decreases) health care costs by increasing (decreasing) the probability of suffering from a chronic disease...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011343082
Gerrymandering undermines representative democracy by creating many uncompetitive legislative districts, and generating the very real possibility that a party that wins a clear majority of the popular vote does not win a majority of districts. We present a new approach to the determination of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012306585
In Switzerland, two key church institutions - the Conference of Swiss Bishops (CSB) and the Federation of Protestant Churches (FPC) - make public recommendations on how to vote for certain referenda. We leverage this unique situation to directly measure religious organizations ́power to shape...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010223454
When based on perceived rather than on objective income distributions, the Meltzer-Richards hypothesis and the POUM hypothesis work quite well empirically: there exists a positive link between perceived inequality or perceived upward mobility and the extent of redistribution in democratic...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010366191
We show that a transfer targeting a minority of the population is sustained by majority voting, however small the minority targeted, when the probability to receive the transfer is decreasing and concave in income. We apply our framework to the French social housing program and obtain that...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010384383
This paper studies the assignment of decision makers to two committees that make decisions by a simple majority rule. There is an even number of decision makers at each of various skill levels and each committee has an odd number of members. Surprisingly, even with the symmetric assumptions in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009162101
We examine whether conservative politicians are less likely to support same-sex marriage when they run for office in safe districts using new data based on a roll-call vote in the national German parliament. The results show that the margin of the majority for the incumbent in the previous...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011742931