This paper studies the relation between political polarization and delegation of stabilization policy. There is asymmetric information about how the economy works: unlike voters, two political parties know the variance of an employment shock. Prior to an election, each party proposes a central banker to be chosen if the party wins. If political polarization is small, voters will learn the true variance and the central banker and the stabilization policy are the ones most preferred by the median voter. If the political polarization is high, stabilization policy does not reflect the variance but only the preferences of the winning party.
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Volume (Year): 109 (1999) Issue (Month): 455 (April) Pages: 164-78 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
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Wolfgang Eggert & Martin Kolmar, .
"Contests with Size Effects,"
EPRU Working Paper Series
02-04, Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
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Paul Heidhues & Johan Lagerlöf, 2000.
"Hiding Information in Electoral Competition,"
CIG Working Papers
FS IV 00-06, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), Research Unit: Competition and Innovation (CIG), revised Feb 2002.
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