Voter Preferences, Polarization, and Electoral Policies

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kamada, Yuichiro; Kojima, Fuhito
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Berkeley; Stanford University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7669
• DOI: 10.1257/mic.6.4.203
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 203-236
• 关键词: Representative democracy; political competition; MODEL; equilibrium; candidates; credibility; STABILITY; ELECTIONS; attitudes

摘要

In most variants of the Hotelling-Downs model of election, it is assumed that voters have concave utility functions. This assumption is arguably justified in issues such as economic policies, but convex utilities are perhaps more appropriate in others, such as moral or religious issues. In this paper, we analyze the implications of convex utility functions in a two-candidate probabilistic voting model with a polarized voter distribution. We show that the equilibrium policies diverge if and only if voters' utility function is sufficiently convex. If two or more issues are involved, policies converge in concave issues and diverge in convex issues.