Showing 1 - 10 of 2,180
This paper studies the impact of immigration on public policy setting. As a natural experiment, we exploit the sudden arrival of eight million forced migrants in West Germany after World War II. These migrants were on average poorer than the West German population, but unlike most international...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012912247
Asymmetric information between voters and legislative representatives poses a major challenge to the functioning of representative democracy. We examine whether representatives are more likely to serve long-term campaign donors instead of constituents during times of low media attention to...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012906525
In this paper, we set up a three-period stochastic overlapping generations model to analyze the implications of income inequality and mobility for demand for redistribution and social insurance. We model the size of two different public programs under the welfare state. We investigate...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013121332
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/10013123565
The ability of groups to implement efficiency-enhancing institutions is emerging as a central theme of research in economics. This paper explores voting on a scheme of intergroup competition which facilitates cooperation in a social dilemma situation. Experimental results show that the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013104948
We analyse preferences for public, private or mixed provision of childcare theoretically and empirically. We model childcare as a publicly provided private good. Richer households should prefer private provision to either pure public or mixed provision. If public provision redistributes from...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013324977
A conclave is a voting mechanism in which a committee selects an alternative by voting until a sufficient supermajority is reached. We study experimentally welfare properties of simple three-voter conclaves with privately known preferences over two outcomes and waiting costs. The resulting game...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013015019
We study how the number of ballot propositions affects the quality of decision making in direct democracy, as reflected in citizens' knowledge, voting behavior, and attitudes toward democracy. Using three comprehensive data sets from Switzerland with over 3,500 propositions, we exploit variation...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012868006
Increasing inequality and associated egalitarian sentiments have again put redistribution on the political agenda. Other-regarding preferences may also affect support for redistribution, but knowledge about their distribution in the broader population and how they are associated with political...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014083850
We study communication in committees selecting one of two alternatives when consensus is required and agents have private information about their preferences. Delaying the decision is costly, so a form of multiplayer war of attrition emerges. Waiting allows voters to express the intensity of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012915720