Why do political constituencies delegate decision power to representative assemblies? And how is the size of such assemblies determined? We analyze these questions of constitutional design in a model with voters learning their preferred alternative only after engaging in costly information...

Voters have strong incentives to increase their influence by trading votes, a practice indeed believed to be common. But is vote trading welfare-improving or welfare-decreasing? We review the theoretical literature and, when available, its related experimental tests. We begin with the analysis...

Commitment voting is a mechanism for signalling intensity of preferences and long-term commitment to governance decisions in proof of stake blockchains. In commitment voting, the voting weight of a vote in any given election is determined by 1) the amount of tokens under a voters control and 2)...

Traditional point views the success of coup as the shifting of focal point from supporting dictator to supporting coup plotter, which cannot be rationalized. When we look at coup's micro-process, we find that it is rationalizable. In this paper, I propose a model of coup with unique sub-game...

This paper presents an empirical examination of economic and institutional development. Utilizing a novel data set on American Indian tribal nations, we investigate how constitutional design affects economic development, while holding the broader legal and political environment fixed....

This paper studies the effects of power-concentrating institutions on the quality of political selection, i.e., the voters' capacity to identify and empower well-suited politicians. In our model, candidates are heterogeneous in two unobservable quality aspects: ability and public-spiritedness....

Gordon Tullock has been one of the most important founders and contributors to Public Choice. Two innovations are typical 'Tullock Challenges'. The first relates to method: the measurement of subjective well-being, or happiness. The second relates to digital social networks such as Facebook,...

Gordon Tullock has been one of the most important founders and contributors to Public Choice. Two innovations are typical Tullock Challenges. The first relates to method: the measurement of subjective well-being, or happiness. The second relates to digital social networks such as Facebook,...

Gordon Tullock has been one of the most important founders and contributors to Public Choice. Two innovations are typical "Tullock Challenges". The first relates to method: the measurement of subjective well-being, or happiness. The second relates to digital social networks such as Facebook,...