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Games
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Political Economy, Social Choice and Game Theory
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Political Economy, Social Choice and Game Theory

A special issue of Games (ISSN 2073-4336).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2019) | Viewed by 41065

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Maria Gallego

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University, 75 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Canada N2L 3C5
Interests: public economics; intergovernmental federalism; game theory; political economy and bargaining theory
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Understanding the choices made in any society or country within a political economy context requires understanding of the strategic interactions of different economic and political agents. Under these circumstances, game theory tools are used within the social choice and political economy traditions to examine the relationship between these agents to examine how these agents influence policy making within given political institutions under different political regimes. Understanding distributional conflicts in society requires modelling bargaining between players with opposing preferences and how they best respond to the actions taken by their opponents. The institutional and informational structure under which policy making takes place shapes the policy agreements reached between these agents with the influence of citizens varying across political regimes. Political economists and social choice theorists have studied elections involving voters, political parties and special interest groups in static or dynamic settings, in repeated games under different political institutions.

The aim of this Special Issue is to bring together political economy models that examine policy making under different political regimes. We invite submissions of political economy and social choice models at the theoretical and/or empirical levels, studying issues in the following areas:

  • Modelling the interaction between different agents (citizens, parties, governments, levels of government) under different political regimes
  • Party positioning in elections under different political regimes
  • The influence of special interest groups in party’s policy positions
  • Elections under different political regimes
  • Bargaining between different agents or coalitions under different political regimes

Dr. Maria Gallego
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Games is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Political economy
  • Social choice
  • Political regimes
  • Institutional structures
  • elections
  • bargaining and conflict
  • voters
  • special interest groups
  • parties/candidates
  • information aggregation
  • repeated elections

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 753 KiB  
Article
A Condorcet Jury Theorem for Large Poisson Elections with Multiple Alternatives
by Johanna M. M. Goertz
Games 2020, 11(1), 2; https://doi.org/10.3390/g11010002 - 23 Dec 2019
Viewed by 4520
Abstract
Herein, we prove a Condorcet jury theorem (CJT) for large elections with multiple alternatives. Voters have common interests that depend on an unknown state of nature. Each voter receives an imprecise private signal about the state of nature and then submits one vote [...] Read more.
Herein, we prove a Condorcet jury theorem (CJT) for large elections with multiple alternatives. Voters have common interests that depend on an unknown state of nature. Each voter receives an imprecise private signal about the state of nature and then submits one vote (simple plurality rule). We also assume that this is a Poisson voting game with population uncertainty. The question is whether the simple plurality rule aggregates information efficiently so that the correct alternative is elected with probability tending to one when the number of voters tends to infinity. The previous literature shows that the CJT holds for large elections with two alternatives, but there is also an example of a large election with three alternatives that has an inefficient equilibrium. We show that there always exists an efficient equilibrium, independent of the number of alternatives. Under certain circumstances (informative types), it is unique in elections with two alternatives. The existence of inefficient equilibria in elections with more than two alternatives is generic. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Political Economy, Social Choice and Game Theory)
25 pages, 466 KiB  
Article
Generalized Backward Induction: Justification for a Folk Algorithm
by Marek Mikolaj Kaminski
Games 2019, 10(3), 34; https://doi.org/10.3390/g10030034 - 30 Aug 2019
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 8454
Abstract
I introduce axiomatically infinite sequential games that extend Kuhn’s classical framework. Infinite games allow for (a) imperfect information, (b) an infinite horizon, and (c) infinite action sets. A generalized backward induction (GBI) procedure is defined for all such games over the roots of [...] Read more.
I introduce axiomatically infinite sequential games that extend Kuhn’s classical framework. Infinite games allow for (a) imperfect information, (b) an infinite horizon, and (c) infinite action sets. A generalized backward induction (GBI) procedure is defined for all such games over the roots of subgames. A strategy profile that survives backward pruning is called a backward induction solution (BIS). The main result of this paper finds that, similar to finite games of perfect information, the sets of BIS and subgame perfect equilibria (SPE) coincide for both pure strategies and for behavioral strategies that satisfy the conditions of finite support and finite crossing. Additionally, I discuss five examples of well-known games and political economy models that can be solved with GBI but not classic backward induction (BI). The contributions of this paper include (a) the axiomatization of a class of infinite games, (b) the extension of backward induction to infinite games, and (c) the proof that BIS and SPEs are identical for infinite games. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Political Economy, Social Choice and Game Theory)
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23 pages, 1807 KiB  
Article
Optimal Majority Rule in Referenda
by Qingqing Cheng and Ming Li
Games 2019, 10(2), 25; https://doi.org/10.3390/g10020025 - 3 Jun 2019
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 6799
Abstract
Adopting the group turnout model of Herrera and Mattozzi, J. Eur. Econ. Assoc. 2010, 8, 838–871, we investigate direct democracy with supermajority rule and different preference intensities for two sides of a referendum: Reform versus status quo. Two parties spend money [...] Read more.
Adopting the group turnout model of Herrera and Mattozzi, J. Eur. Econ. Assoc. 2010, 8, 838–871, we investigate direct democracy with supermajority rule and different preference intensities for two sides of a referendum: Reform versus status quo. Two parties spend money and effort to mobilize their voters. We characterize the set of pure strategy Nash equilibria. We investigate the optimal majority rule that maximizes voters’ welfare. Using an example, we show that the relationship between the optimal majority rule and the preference intensity is not monotonic—the optimal majority rule is initially decreasing and then increasing in the preference intensity of the status quo side. We also show that when the preference intensity of the status quo side is higher, the easiness to mobilize voters on the status quo side is lower, or the payoff that the reform party receives is higher, the optimal majority rule is more likely to be supermajority. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Political Economy, Social Choice and Game Theory)
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23 pages, 1349 KiB  
Article
Voting in Three-Alternative Committees: An Experiment
by Johanna M.M. Goertz and Kirill Chernomaz
Games 2019, 10(2), 20; https://doi.org/10.3390/g10020020 - 1 May 2019
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 6846
Abstract
We design an experiment to test how voters vote in a small committee election with three alternatives. Voters have common preferences that depend on an unknown state of nature. Each voter receives an imprecise private signal prior to the election and then casts [...] Read more.
We design an experiment to test how voters vote in a small committee election with three alternatives. Voters have common preferences that depend on an unknown state of nature. Each voter receives an imprecise private signal prior to the election and then casts a vote. The alternative with the most votes wins. We fix the number of voters in our experiment to be five and focus on differences in the information structure (prior and signal distributions). We test three different treatments (different prior and signal distributions) that pose different challenges for the voters. In one, simply voting for one’s signal is an equilibrium. In the other two, it is not. Despite the different levels of complexity for the voters, they come relatively close to the predicted strategies (that sometimes involve mixing). As a consequence, the efficiency of the decision is also relatively high and comes close to predicted levels. In one variation of the experiment, we calculate posterior beliefs for the subjects and post them. In another, we do not. Interestingly, the important findings do not change. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Political Economy, Social Choice and Game Theory)
18 pages, 383 KiB  
Article
Ideal Reactive Equilibrium
by Asha Sadanand
Games 2019, 10(2), 19; https://doi.org/10.3390/g10020019 - 15 Apr 2019
Viewed by 7396
Abstract
Refinements of the Nash equilibrium have followed the strategy of extending the idea of subgame perfection to incomplete information games. This has been achieved by appropriately restricting beliefs at unreached information sets. Each new refinement gives stricter and more mathematically-complicated limitations on permitted [...] Read more.
Refinements of the Nash equilibrium have followed the strategy of extending the idea of subgame perfection to incomplete information games. This has been achieved by appropriately restricting beliefs at unreached information sets. Each new refinement gives stricter and more mathematically-complicated limitations on permitted beliefs. A simpler approach is taken here, where the whole idea of beliefs is dispensed with, and a new equilibrium concept, called the ideal reactive equilibrium, that builds on some pioneering work by Amershi, Sadanand and Sadanand on thought process dynamics, is developed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Political Economy, Social Choice and Game Theory)
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12 pages, 284 KiB  
Article
Luxembourg in the Early Days of the EEC: Null Player or Not?
by Alexander Mayer
Games 2018, 9(2), 29; https://doi.org/10.3390/g9020029 - 22 May 2018
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 5930
Abstract
Voters whose yes-or-no decision never makes a difference to the outcome in a simple voting game are known as “null players”. Luxembourg’s role in the Council of Ministers during the first period of the European Economic Community (EEC) is often cited as a [...] Read more.
Voters whose yes-or-no decision never makes a difference to the outcome in a simple voting game are known as “null players”. Luxembourg’s role in the Council of Ministers during the first period of the European Economic Community (EEC) is often cited as a real-world case. The paper contrasts the textbook claim that Luxembourg was a null player with a more comprehensive picture of Luxembourg’s role in EEC’s voting system. The assessment of Luxembourg’s voting power is sensitive to the role played by the European Commission in the decision-making procedure and the measurement concepts underlying power evaluations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Political Economy, Social Choice and Game Theory)
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