This work studies the effect of the value of the status quo in the candidates' decisions and policy outcomes in a representative democracy with endogenous candidates. Following the citizen-candidate model due to Besley and Coate (1997) we show, for a unidimensional policy issue and for both an...

This paper studies the advantages that a coalition of agents obtains by forming a voting bloc to pool their votes and cast them all together. We identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for an agent to benefit from the formation of the voting bloc, both if the agent is a member of the...

Games with imperfect information often feature multiple equilibria, which depend on beliefs off the equilibrium path. Standard selection criteria such as <i>passive beliefs, symmetric beliefs or wary beliefs</i> rest on ad hoc restrictions on beliefs. We propose a new selection criterion that imposes...

We study repeated legislative bargaining in an assembly that chooses its bargaining rules endogenously, and whose members face an election after each legislative term. An agenda protocol or bargaining rule assigns to each legislator a probability of being recognized to make a policy proposal in...

This paper studies the advantages that a coalition of agents in a larger electorate can obtain by forming a voting bloc to pool their votes and cast them all in one direction. We show under which conditions an agent will benefit from the formation of the voting bloc, whether being part of it or...

This paper studies the advantages that a coalition of agents obtain by forming a voting bloc to pool their votes and cast them all together. We identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for an agent to benefit from the formation of the voting bloc, both if the agent is a member of the...

This work follows the citizen candidate model of Besley and Coate (1997) to show that for a unidimensional policy issue, a moderate default policy rules out equilibrium outcomes in which there is an uncontested candidate. Copyright 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd..