We study how the closeness of electoral race affect the number of invalid ballots under the traditional paper-ballot voting technology. Using a large dataset from the Italian parliamentary elections in 1994-2001, we find a strong positive correlation between the closeness of electoral race and...

This paper analyzes preferences in the presence of ambiguity that are rational in the sense of satisfying the classical ordering condition as well as monotonicity. Under technical conditions that are natural in an Anscombe-Aumann environment, we show that even for such general preference model...

We study the interplay of probabilistic sophistication, second order stochastic dominance, and uncertainty aversion, three fundamental notions in choice under uncertainty. In particular, our main result, Theorem 2, characterizes uncertainty averse preferences that satisfy second order stochastic...

Is the decline in voter turnout an indicator of a worse health of a representative democracy? We build a simple probabilistic-voting model with endogenous turnout to address this question. We ?nd that a lower turnout caused by a higher cost of voting implies higher political rents. Contrarily, a...

Mission-driven nonprofi?t organizations compete for donations through fundrais- ing activities. Such competition can lead to inefficient outcomes, if nonpro?fits impose ex- ternalities on each others? output. This paper studies the design of sustainable voluntary cooperation agreements, using a...

Randomized controlled trials (RCT) have become a dominant empirical tool in applied economics. The internal validity of RCTs crucially depends on the (implicit) assumption that the procedure assigning subjects to treatment and control groups has no effect on behavior. We show theoretically that...

We study unique and globally attracting solutions of a general nonlinear equation that has as special cases some recursive equations widely used in Economics.

This note provides a behavioral characterization of mutually absolutely continuous multiple priors.

We introduce a theoretical framework in which to study interdependent preferences, where the outcome of others affects the preferences of the decision maker. The dependence may take place in two conceptually different ways, depending on how the decision maker evaluates what the others have. In...

This paper axiomatizes an intertemporal version of the Smooth Ambiguity decision model developed in Klibanoff, Marinacci, and Mukerji (2005). A key feature of the model is that it achieves a separation between ambiguity, identified as a characteristic of the decision maker's subjective beliefs,...