We investigate empirically the extent of misreporting in a poverty-alleviation program in which self-reported information, followed by a household visit, is used to determine eligibility. Underreporting may be due to a deception motive, and overreporting to an embarrassment motive. We find that...

We consider a two-alternative election with voluntary participation and nearly common interests in which voters may acquire information about which alternative is best. Voters may be rational or naive in the sense of being able, or not, to update their beliefs about the state of the world...

We survey and synthesize the political economy literature on dynamic elections in the two traditional settings, spatial preferences and rent-seeking, under perfect and imperfect monitoring of politicians actions. We define the notion of stationary electoral equilibrium, which encompasses...

We develop a dynamic political economy model in which invest- ment in the state capacity to levy taxes and deter crime is a policy variable, and we study the evolution of state capacity when policy is chosen by an elite. We show that democratization in the sense of ex- pansion of the elite leads...

Participation in social programs, such as clubs and other social organizations, results from a process in which an agent learns about the requirements, benefits, and likelihood of acceptance related to a program, applies to be a participant, and, finally, is accepted or rejected. The authors...

This paper studies a situation in which parties are better informed than voters about the optimal policies for voters. We show that voters are able to infer the parties' information by observing their electoral positions, even if parties have policy preferences which differ substantially from...