We set up a model of elections or referendums with two alternatives to study how voter turnout and election outcomes are affected by the publication of exit polls on election day. We find that the introduction of an exit poll influences the incentive to vote both before and after the poll is...

In this paper we study the functioning of representative democracy when politicians are better informed than the electorate about conditions relevant for policy choice. We consider a model with two states of the world. The distribution of voters preferred policies shifts with the state. The two...

Intelligence about transnational terrorist threats is generally gathered by national agencies. I set up and analyze a game theoretic model to study the implications of national intelligence gathering for the provision of domestic (defensive) counterterrorism when two countries are facing a...

The quality of political candidates often depends on the current state of the world, for example because their personal characteristics are more valuable in some situations than in others. We explore the implications of state-dependent candidate quality in a model of electoral competition where...