IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pri/econom/2016-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Policy Competition in Real-Time

Author

Listed:
  • Faruk Gul

    (Princeton University)

  • Wolfgang Pesendorfer

    (Princeton University)

Abstract

We formulate a dynamic model of party competition with a one-dimensional policy space. Policy choices at different times are linked because parties cannot change their policies abruptly, instead, policy adjustment happens gradually. Parties are uncertain of the median’s policy preferences at the time they choose their policies. Our results relate the steady state equilibrium of the dynamic game to parties’ beliefs about voter preferences. In particular, we show that for symmetric games, the steady-state outcome is the local equilibrium of the corresponding static Wittman game.

Suggested Citation

  • Faruk Gul & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 2016. "Policy Competition in Real-Time," Working Papers 2016-7, Princeton University. Economics Department..
  • Handle: RePEc:pri:econom:2016-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.princeton.edu/~pesendor/realtime.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hinich, Melvin J. & Ledyard, John O. & Ordeshook, Peter C., 1972. "Nonvoting and the existence of equilibrium under majority rule," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 144-153, April.
    2. Norman Schofield & Itai Sened, 2002. "Local Nash Equilibrium in Multiparty Politics," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 109(1), pages 193-211, January.
    3. Martin J. Osborne, 1995. "Spatial Models of Political Competition under Plurality Rule: A Survey of Some Explanations of the Number of Candidates and the Positions They Take," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 28(2), pages 261-301, May.
    4. Adams, James & Somer-Topcu, Zeynep, 2009. "Policy Adjustment by Parties in Response to Rival Parties’ Policy Shifts: Spatial Theory and the Dynamics of Party Competition in Twenty-Five Post-War Democracies," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 39(4), pages 825-846, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    2. Donald Wittman, 1984. "Multi-candidate equilibria," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 287-291, January.
    3. Krause, Werner & Giebler, Heiko, 2020. "Shifting Welfare Policy Positions: The Impact of Radical Right Populist Party Success Beyond Migration Politics," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 56(3), pages 331-348.
    4. Jaideep Roy & Marcin Dziubinski, 2008. "Electoral Competition amongst Citizen-candidates and Downsian Politicians," CEDI Discussion Paper Series 08-10, Centre for Economic Development and Institutions(CEDI), Brunel University.
    5. Arnaud Dellis, 2022. "Does Party Polarization Affect the Electoral Prospects of a New Centrist Candidate?," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-20, July.
    6. Fabian Gouret & Guillaume Hollard & Stéphane Rossignol, 2011. "An empirical analysis of valence in electoral competition," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 37(2), pages 309-340, July.
    7. Timothy Besley & Torsten Persson, 2011. "Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics of Development Clusters," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9624.
    8. Xefteris, Dimitrios, 2017. "Multidimensional electoral competition between differentiated candidates," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 112-121.
    9. Leonie Geyer & Patrick Mellacher, 2024. "Simulating Party Competition in Dynamic Voter Distributions," Graz Economics Papers 2024-19, University of Graz, Department of Economics.
    10. Stefan Krasa & Mattias Polborn, 2007. "Majority-efficiency and Competition-efficiency in a Binary Policy Model," CESifo Working Paper Series 1958, CESifo.
    11. Larry Samuelson, 1984. "Electoral equilibria with restricted strategies," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 307-327, January.
    12. Guillaume Hollard & Stéphane Rossignol, 2008. "An Alternative Approach to Valence Advantage in Spatial Competition," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 10(3), pages 441-454, June.
    13. Paola Profeta, 2002. "Retirement and Social Security in a Probabilistic Voting Model," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 9(4), pages 331-348, August.
    14. Marco Bassetto, 2008. "Political Economy of Taxation in an Overlapping-Generations Economy," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(1), pages 18-43, January.
    15. Krasa, Stefan & Polborn, Mattias, 2010. "Competition between Specialized Candidates," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 104(4), pages 745-765, November.
    16. Tanner, Thomas Cole, 1994. "The spatial theory of elections: an analysis of voters' predictive dimensions and recovery of the underlying issue space," ISU General Staff Papers 1994010108000018174, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    17. Lourdes Rojas Rubio, 2022. "Leader influence on Politics," THEMA Working Papers 2022-16, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    18. Chen, Daniel L., 2016. "Priming Ideology: Why Presidential Elections Affect U.S. Judges," TSE Working Papers 16-681, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Aug 2016.
    19. Marco Haan, 2000. "Endogenous Party Formation in a Model of Representative Democracy," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 0598, Econometric Society.
    20. Leonardo Becchetti & Gianluigi Conzo, 2023. "The Wind of Populism: Voter Turnout and Political Distance," CEIS Research Paper 569, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 19 Dec 2023.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Policy Competition; Party Competition; Policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O29 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Other

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pri:econom:2016-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bobray Bordelon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deprius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.