Electoral competition under costly policy implementation

Dimitrios Xefteris and Galina Zudenkova ()

Social Choice and Welfare, 2018, vol. 50, issue 4, No 7, 739 pages

Abstract: Abstract This paper analyzes a unidimensional electoral competition model between two policy-motivated candidates, assuming that the elected candidate has to incur an idiosyncratic policy implementation cost. Think of this as the election of chairman in an academic department, a parent-teacher association, or a condominium association board, where the election winner perceives office holding as a cost, and not benefit. We prove that in such a game, a pure strategy Nash equilibrium is guaranteed to exist even when the policy implementation costs are heterogeneous, as long as they are not very large. We also provide the equilibrium characterization, comparative statics, and welfare analysis in the case of Euclidean preferences. In particular, we show that equilibrium strategies are divergent and in general not symmetric around the expected bliss point of the median voter. A higher policy implementation cost makes a candidate propose a more extreme policy, and lowers his electoral chances. Naturally, the voter’s welfare decreases when the candidates’ implementation costs increase.

Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00355-017-1103-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sochwe:v:50:y:2018:i:4:d:10.1007_s00355-017-1103-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... c+theory/journal/355

DOI: 10.1007/s00355-017-1103-3

Access Statistics for this article

Social Choice and Welfare is currently edited by Bhaskar Dutta, Marc Fleurbaey, Elizabeth Maggie Penn and Clemens Puppe

More articles in Social Choice and Welfare from Springer, The Society for Social Choice and Welfare Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().