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Political Selection with Pessimistic Voters

Author

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  • Alvaro Forteza

    (Departamento de Economía, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República.)

Abstract

I analyze political agency models with potentially two equilibria, one in which elections are e¤ective selection mechanisms and only "good" individuals participate in politics and another one in which elections are not e¤ective and "bad" individuals participate in politics. These equilibria are self-ful.lling prophecies: if citizens expect a low-quality political class, bad individuals will participate and the political class will have low quality. If citizens expect a high-quality political class, only good individuals will have incentives to participate and the political class will be of high quality. The model exhibits only the good equilibrium if the proportion of good individuals in the society is su¢ ciently high. I analyze the impact of popularity shocks and redistribution on the set of equilibria.

Suggested Citation

  • Alvaro Forteza, 2013. "Political Selection with Pessimistic Voters," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 1313, Department of Economics - dECON.
    • Handle: RePEc:ude:wpaper:1313
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    File URL: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12008/2261
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Agencia política; selección política; equilibrios multiples;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E69 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Other
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State

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