Individual Difference And Outcomes In Political And Economic Systems

My research in this area is all joint with Barry Nalebuff. The following three papers below introduce a series of somewhat surprising technical results. In essence, we show that previously noted problems with voting systems and with models of price competition may be mitigated if individual differences are "not too great" in a sense that we make precise.

On 64% Majority Rule, with Barry Nalebuff, Econometrica, 1988, 787-814

Aggregation and Social Choice: A Mean Voter Theorem, with Barry Nalebuff, Econometrica, 1991, 1-23

Aggregation and Imperfect Competition, with Barry Nalebuff, Econometrica, 1991, 25-59

These papers represent pure model-building of a pretty high order, if I say so myself. I am particularly fond of the mean voter paper, since it seems to offer the chance of progress in political models in which there is more than one issue that divides the population. Believe it or not, before our model came along, almost all theoretical insights in voting models were derived in models with only one issue at stake in any election. Come to think of it, they still are! Hello there!

The next paper introduces a beautiful question on which Barry and I were able to make only limited progress. We have developed a framework for analyzing competition among institutions, taking account of feedback effects. The inhabitants of a neighborhood influence outcomes, and outcomes influence preferences among neighborhoods. The following paper sketches the approach, while our paper in the Journal of Economic Theory of 1997 proves all the results we could find. The questions are really tough, but answers would be of immense practical value if they could be found.

Individuals and Institutions, with Barry Nalebuff, AER, May 1992, 317-322