We study situations where a new entrant with privately known talent competes with an incumbent whose talent is common knowledge. Competition takes the form of a rank-order tournament. Prior to the competition, the newbie can "show off," i.e., send a talent revealing costly signal. We find that...

Disclosure of lobbying activity has become much more timely and stringent in the US, and many demand similar regulation also for lobbying in the European Union. Disclosure informs voters about a lobbyist’s activity, but it also informs rival lobbying groups, with strategic consequences. Under...

We study situations where a new entrant with privately known talent competes with an incumbent whose talent is common knowledge. Competition takes the form of a rank-order tournament. Prior to the competition, the newbie can "show off," i.e., send a talent revealing costly signal. We find that...

Increasingly, lobbying groups are subject to transparency requirements, obliging them to provide detailed information about their business. We study the effect this transparency policy has on the nature of lobbying competition. Under mild conditions, mandated transparency leads to an increase in...

In this paper I develop a formal theory of campaign communications. Voters have priors about the quality of candidates' policies in the different policy issues and about the issues’ relative importance. Candidates spend time or money (TV ads, public speeches, etc.) in an effort to influence...

This paper analyzes the influence of social identity on voters' decisions. In a theoretical model, we show that social identity concerns induce a preference to vote for individuals with similar characteristics as oneselve. We then test our model's predictions using data from low information...

We explore how public opinion polls affect candidates' campaign spending in political competition. Generally, polls lead to asymmetric behavior. Under a majority rule there always exists an equilibrium in which the initially more popular candidate invests more in the campaign and thereby...