A decision maker is presented with two preference orders over n objects and chooses the one which is “closer” to his own preference order. We consider several plausible comparison rules that the decision maker might employ. We show that when n is large and the pair of orders to be compared...

This paper presents a model of Downsian political competition in which voters are imperfectly informed about economic fundamentals. In this setting, parties' choices of platforms influence voters' behavior not only through voters' preferences over policies, but also through formation of their...

This paper presents a model of Downsian political competition in which voters are imperfectly informed about economic fundamentals. In this setting, partiesfchoices of platforms influence votersf behavior not only through votersf preferences over policies, but also through formation of their...

This paper extends a probabilistic voting model with a multidimensional policy space, allowing candidates to have different prior probability distributions of the distribution of voters' ideal policies. In this model, we show that a platform pair is a Nash equilibrium if and only if both...

This paper presents a Downsian model of political competition in which parties have incomplete but richer information than voters on policy effects. Each party can observe a private signal of the policy effects, while voters cannot. In this setting, voters infer the policy effects from the party...

This paper presents a Downsian model of political competition in which parties have incomplete but richer information than voters on policy effects. Each party can observe a private signal of the policy effects, while voters cannot. In this setting, voters infer the policy effects from the party...

This paper presents a Downsian model of political competition in which parties have incomplete but richer information than voters on policy effects. Each party can observe a private signal of the policy effects, while voters cannot. In this setting, voters infer the policy effects from the party...

It is widely held that compared with a legislature with a single majority party, a multi-party legislature achieves more precise representation of society. But the scope of such an advantage that a multi-party system has is rarely discussed. We study the range of social preferences that a...