We study an election with two perfectly informed candidates. Voters share common values over the policy outcome of the election, but possess arbitrarily little information about which policy is best for them. Voters elect one of the candidates, effectively choosing between the two policies...

We consider the optimization problem of a campaign trying to win an election when facing aggregate uncertainty, where agentsʼ voting probabilities are uncertain. Even a small amount of uncertainty will in a large electorate eliminate many of counterintuitive results that arise when voting...

In a common-values election where voters receive a signal about which candidate is superior, suppose there is a small amount of uncertainty about the conditional likelihood of the signalʼs outcome, given the correct candidate. Once this uncertainty is resolved, the signal is i.i.d. across...

This paper introduces a model of electoral competition in which candidates select policies and voters are then exposed to arguments in favor of the policies. Voters update their beliefs about their own private preferences after listening to arguments and then vote in the election. I show that...

In a seminal paper, Grossman and Helpman (1994) introduced a framework to understand how lobbying influences the choice of import/export tariffs. In this paper we extend their analysis and assume that lobbies have private information to analyze the effects of information transmission in a...

We consider collective choice from two alternatives. Ex-ante, each agent is uncertain about which alternative she prefers, and may be uncertain about the intensity of her preferences. An environment is given by a probability distribution over utility vectors that is symmetric across agents and...

Donations in-kind can be a mixed blessing for charities, who are often more adept at solicitation than resale. Many organizations rely on raffles to turn donations into cash, but auctions are also common. Theory predicts that all-pay mechanisms should produce more revenue than winner-pay...

The rapid growth of online retail in the last decade has led to widespread use of consumer-generated ratings. This paper theoretically and experimentally identifies influences that drive consumers to rate products and examines how those factors can create distortions in product ratings. By...

Psychological game theory can provide rational-choice-based framing effects; frames influence beliefs, beliefs influence motivations. We explain this theoretically and explore empirical relevance experimentally. In a 2×2 design of one-shot public good games we show that frames affect subjectʼs...