Scholars traditionally claim that unanimity rule is more capable of producing Pareto optimal outcomes than majority rule. Dougherty and Edward (Public Choice 151(3):655–678, <CitationRef CitationID="CR16">2012</CitationRef>) make the opposite claim assuming proposals are either random, sincere, or strategic. We test these competing...</citationref>

Representative democracy translates the preferences of the electorate into policy outcomes. Individual voters do not directly vote on policy; rather, their elected representatives create and establish policy. How well do the institutions of representative democracy translate the preferences of...

Previous studies of the U.S. Constitutional Convention have relied on votes recorded for the state blocs or a relatively small number of delegate votes. We construct a new data set covering delegate votes on over 600 substantive roll calls, and use the data in several ways. First, we estimate a...

Under the Articles of Confederation, the American states frequently failed to pay their requisitions to the national government, sapping it of revenue. This paper explains the failure to raise revenue from the states by analyzing the system of requisitions in the context of Shays' Rebellion....