risk aversion and bandwagon effect in the pivotal voter model the empirical literature on the effects of opinion polls on election outcomes has recently found substantial evidence of a bandwagon effect defined as the phenomenon according to which the publication of opinion polls is advantageous to the candidate with the greatest support this result is driven in the lab experiments by a higher turnout rate among the majority than among the minority such evidence is however in stark contrast with the main theoretical model of electoral participation in public choice the pivotal voter model which predicts that the supporters of an underdog candidate participate at a higher rate given the higher probability of casting a pivotal vote this paper tries to reconcile this discrepancy by showing that a bandwagon effect can be generated within the pivotal voter model by concavity in the voters utility function which makes electoral participation more costly for the expected loser supporters given the strict relationship between concavity and risk aversion the paper also establishes the role of risk aversion as a determinant of bandwagon

coalitional stability of multi party systems evidence from poland function form game that represents payoffs of electoral coalitions in a multi party system three empirical hypotheses are formulated under the assumption that seat maximizing parties modify coalitional structures to extract gains from coalescing the hypotheses say that party systems under stable voter preferences and electoral law tend to stability with respect to splits and coalescing the partition function is estimated for various coalitional structures for the polish party system with simulation based on district level election results and survey data the estimates show that the polish party system is split stable while the opportunities for gains from coalitions on the right were exhausted between the years of 1993 and 1997 some opportunities for such gains emerged on the left introduction

comparing linear and circular supply chains a case study from the construction industry in the last decades green and sustainable supply chain management practices have been developed in efforts to try and reduce the negative consequences of production and consumption processes on the environment in parallel to this the circular economy discourse has been propagated in the industrial ecology and production economics literature and lately in business and practice the ideals of circular economy principles suggests that the frontiers of environmental sustainability can be pushed by emphasising the idea of transforming products in such a way that there are workable relationships between ecological systems and economic growth by arguing for these ideals to be integrated into green supply chain management theory and practice the paper uses a case study from the construction industry to demonstrate the environmental gains in terms of carbon emissions that can be achieved through some circular economy principles as against traditional linear production systems the paper therefore asserts that an integration of circular economy principles within sustainable supply chain management can provide clear advantages from an environmental point view despite some external supply chain influences and scenarios further to this emerging supply chain management challenges and market dynamics are also highlighted and discussed

evaluating the comprehensive benefit of eco industrial parks by employing multi criteria decision making approach for circular economy abstract with the increasing conflicts among economic growth environmental deterioration and resource shortage as an effective way to achieve the sustainable development and circular economy the eco industrial park gradually becomes a critical research issue in the field of recycling economy in this paper a hybrid framework for evaluating the comprehensive benefit of eco industrial parks from the perspective of circular economy was proposed firstly the evaluation index system for eco industrial parks was constructed by employing the grey delphi method according to the opinions provided by experts from relevant fields which includes economic benefit criteria social benefit criteria environmental benefit criteria ecology industry construction criteria and management level criteria consisting of seventeen quantitative sub criteria and nine qualitative sub criteria secondly in order to solve complicated uncertain and ambiguous problems under the fuzzy background a hybrid multi criteria decision making mcdm approach was put forward on the basis of superiority linguistic ratings and entropy weight method for weight determination as well as fuzzy vikor for ranking alternatives finally the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed hybrid mcdm approach was demonstrated through a case analysis of six representative eco industrial parks in china and the comprehensive benefits of six eco industrial parks were prioritized effectively the hybrid mcdm approach in this paper presents a great potential in evaluating and ranking the comprehensive benefits of eco industrial parks through solving complex and ambiguous problems in a fuzzy environment and varying mcdm tools the evaluation findings by employing the proposed mcdm approach can provide references for the construction and management of eco industrial parks and relevant policy formulation

nowcasting sales growth of manufacturing companies in india abstractthe performance of private corporate sector is used as an important demand indicator for monetary policy making as these data are received with a lag assessing and monitoring of corporate sales on a real time basis poses a significant challenge to policy makers in india in this context this article attempts to nowcast quarterly sales growth of indian manufacturing companies and gdp growth of india using dynamic factor modelling framework a multiple level framework through turning point analysis and elastic net structure is used to overcome the overfitting problem during variable selection empirical results show improvement in forecast accuracy for one quarter ahead nowcast using 3 factor and 4 factor models over the benchmark model however absolute dominance of 3 factor models over 4 factor models was not established as such the article has proposed a forecast combination technique to nowcast sales growth of manufacturing companies in india

a theory of voting equilibria a voting equilibrium arises when the voters in an electorate acting in accordance with both their preferences for the candidates and their perceptions of the relative chances of various pairs of candidates being in contention for victory generate an election result that justifies their perceptions voting equilibria always exist and the set of equilibria can vary substantially with the choice of voting system we compare equilibria under the plurality rule approval voting and the borda system we consider a candidate positioning game and find that the plurality rule imposes little restriction on the position of the winning candidate in three candidate races while approval voting leads to a winner positioned at the median of the voter distribution we contrast campaign activities intended to influence voter preferences with activities meant to influence only perceptions of candidate viability

information pooling through majority rule voting condorcet s jury theorem with correlated votes abstract does majority rule voting steer an imperfectly informed assembly of people towards the full information outcome condorcet s jury theorem provides an affirmative answer under certain conditions a key condition is that the votes be statistically independent however it is unrealistic and hence unacceptable this paper generalizes the jury theorem to certain general models of correlated voting viz normal hypergeometric and polya distributions the paper proves that the effectiveness of majority rule voting decreases as the correlation between votes increases potential applications are indicated

coordination and policy moderation at midterm coordination and policy moderation at midterm eligible voters have been coordinating their turnout and vote decisions for the house of representatives in midterm elections coordination is a noncooperative rational expectations equilibrium stochastic choice models estimated using individual level data from nes surveys of years 1978 1998 support the coordinating model and reject a nonstrategic model the coordinating model shows that many voters have incentives to change their votes between presidential year and midterm after learning the outcome of the presidential election but this mechanism alone does not explain the size of midterm cycles the largest source of loss of support for the president s party at midterm is a regular pattern in which the median differences between voters ideal points and the parties policy positions have become less favorable for the president s party than they were at the time of the presidential election nonvoters show the same pattern the interelection changes are not consistent with the theory of surge and decline do americans coordinate their electoral choices in midterm congressional elections we use coordination to describe a situation in which two conditions hold for everyone who is eligible to vote i e every elector each elector combines information that each elector has privately with information that everyone has in common to make the best possible prediction of the election outcome and each elector makes the choice consistent with the elector s prediction that is most likely to produce the best possible result for the elector each elector s prediction takes into account what all electors best strategies would be given the information they have in common a condition described by saying that each elector has rational expectations the choice each elector makes is part of the elector s private information when every elector makes choices according to a strategy that is consistent with the elector s rational expectations and no elector can produce a personally better outcome by using a different strategy then there is a noncooperative equilibrium coordination is defined as the existence of a noncooperative equilibrium that is based on everyone having rational expectations beyond implications for the regularity with which the president s party loses vote share in midterm elections which we discuss below the existence of coordination is important because coordination implies that electors take one another into account in a constitutionally significant way in american elections coordination is based on the separation of powers between the president and congress coordination occurs when electors anticipate how election outcomes will affect bargaining about policy within the legislature and between the legislature and the executive by instituting the constitutional separation of powers madison believed that elected officials pursuit of their selfish interests and ambitions would lead them to act with regard to one another in ways that would prevent governmental tyranny carey 1978 159 160 even electors who did not coordinate might hope with madison that the separation of powers would affect officials in that way but if coordination exists electors shift from being mere observers of consequences the constitutional provisions may produce to being agents who are led to counteract one another by the constitutional incentives coordinating electors are as wary of one another as they are of officials

coordination moderation and institutional balancing in american presidential and house elections outcome in the theoretical equilibrium the proportion of voters who split their ticket in order to balance the house with the president has been small but large enough to affect election outcomes moderation has usually been based on voters expectations that the president will be at least an equal of the house in determining postelection policy d o americans coordinate their votes for president and for congress suppose a voter knows that policy outcomes are compromises between the positions taken by the president and congress and believes the two political parties push for distinct policy alternatives then the voter believes that different combinations of party control of the presidency and congress will produce different policy outcomes if the voter cares about the policy outcomes then the voter s choices among candidates should depend on the combination of party control the choices will help bring

competing for endorsements endorsements are a simple language for communication between interest group leaders and group members the members who share policy concerns may not perfectly understand where their interests lie on certain issues if their leaders cannot fully explain the issues they can convey some information by endorsing a candidate or party when interest groups endorse legislative contenders the candidates may compete for backing policies may favor special interests at the expense of the general public the authors examine the conditions under which parties compete for endorsements the extent to which policy outcomes are skewed and the normative properties of the political equilibria

how do scholars approach the circular economy a systematic literature review abstract circular economy ce aims to overcome the take make dispose linear pattern of production and consumption proposing a circular system in which the value of products materials and resources is maintained in the economy as long as possible in recent years there has been a proliferation of scholars publications on the topic this study presents the results of a systematic literature review exploring the state of the art of academic research on ce the paper examines the ce body of literature with a systematic approach to provide an exhaustive analysis of the phenomenon with rigorous and reproducible research criteria the revisited material consists of 565 articles collected through the web of science and scopus databases and has been evaluated using specific structural dimensions to group literature into analytical categories starting from being a concept studied in connection with industrial ecology ce has slowly acquired its independent role in academic research framed mainly into environmental sustainability related studies as a result of policies implementation academic production is mainly concentrated in china and europe employing tools and methods for modelling processes and supporting decision making for ce implementation e g life cycle assessment and material flow analysis ce studies follow three main lines of action the first aims to change the social and economic dynamics at macro and administrative level the second to support firms in circular processes implementation at micro level to spread new forms of consumption and product design the third developed at meso level discusses industrial symbiosis experiences ce is associated with a variety of concepts and waste management emerges as the most relevant sub sector ce is also strongly connected with the concept of sustainability proposing ways to operationalize its implementation at the environmental and economic level while scholars only marginally consider social and institutional implications the most explored practices are those related to cleaner production aiming at reducing environmental impact and waste production along the life cycle of a product and optimizing the performance and efficiency of processes conversely studies on ce may devote greater attention to strategies for social and institutional changes able to transform the upstream process of production and consumption considering business model strategies scholars mainly focus on studying closing material loops strategy while slowing the loops which requires a radical change of consumption and production patterns is only marginally included with respect to ce implementation this study s findings highlight ce as an evolving concept that still requires development to consolidate its definition boundaries principles and associated practices

nowcasting the real time informational content of macroeconomic data abstract a formal method is developed for evaluating the marginal impact that intra monthly data releases have on current quarter forecasts nowcasts of real gross domestic product gdp growth the method can track the real time flow of the type of information monitored by central banks because it can handle large data sets with staggered data release dates each time new data are released the nowcasts are updated on the basis of progressively larger data sets that reflecting the unsynchronized data release dates have a jagged edge across the most recent months

partisan politics and election failure with ignorant voters abstract we analyze candidate competition when some voters do not observe a candidate s policy choice voters have a personality preference when both candidates offer the same policy in equilibrium the candidate with a personality advantage may get elected with a partisan policy even though his opponent s policy is preferred by all voters the departure from the downsian prediction is most pronounced when candidates have a weak policy preference and care mostly about winning the election in that case uninformed voters choose the candidate with the preferred personality even if electing this candidate implies a lower payoff on average

strategic competition in sequential election contests this paper studies a sequential election contest such as theamerican presidential primary in which several electionsoccur one at a time until a single winner emerges theconventional wisdom is such a system benefits a candidatefavored in the initial elections because of momentum thispaper uncovers a potentially opposing force if participationis costly and candidates exit when they have unfavorablefuture prospects a candidate with friendly elections at theend of the contest will typically benefit from the resultinggame theoretic competition tension between this strategic effect and momentum helpsexplain several empirical regularities of presidentialprimaries

towards circular economy implementation a comprehensive review in context of manufacturing industry the concept of circular economy ce is to an increasing extent treated as a solution to series of challenges such as waste generation resource scarcity and sustaining economic benefits however the concept of circularity is not of novel as such specific circumstances and motivations have stimulated ideas relevant to circularity in the past through activities such as reuse remanufacturing or recycling main objectives of this work are to provide a comprehensive review of research efforts encompassing aspects of resources scarcity waste generation and economic advantages to explore the ce landscape in the context of these three aspects especially when they are considered simultaneously based on an idea of a comprehensive ce framework propose an implementation strategy using top down and bottom up approach in a concurrent manner to fulfill this objective a comprehensive review of state of the art research is carried out to understand different ideas relevant to ce motivation for the research and context of their recurrence main contributions of this paper are a comprehensive ce framework and a practical implementation strategy for a regenerative economy and natural environment the framework emphasizes on a combined view of three main aspects i e environment resources and economic benefits it also underlines that joint support of all stakeholders is necessary in order to successfully implement the ce concept at large scale the proposed framework and implementation strategy also identify new avenues for future research and practice in the field of ce

the rationally uninformed electorate some experimental evidence this essay reports on a series of twenty four election experiments in which voters are allowed to decide between voting retrospectively and purchasing contemporaneous information about the candidate challenging the incumbent each experiment consists of a series of election periods in which dummy candidates choose spatial positions which represent either their policy while in office or a promise about policy if elected subjects voters are told the value to them of the incumbent s policy but they must decide prior to voting whether or not to purchase information about the value of the challenger s promise in general our data conform to reasonable expectations voters purchase less information and rely more on retrospective knowledge when the candidates strategies are stable and their likelihood of purchasing information during periods of instability is tempered by the likelihood that their votes matter by the reliability of the information available for purchase and by the degree of instability as measured by changes in each voter s welfare

creating integrated business and environmental value within the context of china s circular economy and ecological modernization abstract this paper investigates the challenges and opportunities of how firms and organizations can and will be able to strike a better balance between economic growth and environmental stewardship in the context of china s emerging circular economy policy paradigm and based on ecological modernization theoretic approaches based on three company case studies in the information technology and electronic industries in china we identify and demonstrate how a blended business and environmental value can be created from adopting a sustainable supply chain management approach the adoption of a sustainable supply chain management approach is rapidly becoming a key business challenge and opportunity in china and other large emerging economies around the world where our greatest environmental management challenges currently reside and will continue to exist for many years to come the value creation framework proposed in research focuses on evaluating three case study companies who appear in various stages of an electronic industry supply chain value creation within a supply chain can provide the impetus for organizations to adopt circular economy sustainable supply chain practices for competitive reasons in addition we describe how a value proposition can be evaluated at two levels of analysis a more specific micro level and a more general meso level of analysis the four major business value dimensions include cost reduction revenue generation resiliency and legitimacy and image the initial findings are that a variety of opportunities exist for electronic firms in emerging and developing countries while results from this study provide an important scholarly foundation to develop and refine sustainable supply chain management practices in emerging and developing economies

momentum and social learning in presidential primaries this paper investigates social learning in sequential voting systems in the econometric model candidates experience momentum effects when their performance in early states exceeds expectations the empirical application uses daily polling data from the 2004 presidential primary we find that kerry benefited from surprising wins in early states and took votes away from dean owing to these momentum effects early voters had up to five times the influence of late voters in the selection of candidates and this helps to explain the distribution of advertising expenditures finally we use the estimated model to conduct two counterfactual experiments

rational expectations in elections some experimental results based on a multidimensional model while our experimental results do not show convincingly the superiority of our model over alternative hypotheses these results do not reject the rational expectations approach to handling incomplete information in elections this is not to say of course that our model provides the most appropriate treatment of incomplete information since it relies primarily on one source of information polls certainly other data exist such as the historical record of the parties primary election outcomes and the coalitions observed at nominating conventions which voters might use for information on their choices what we hope our analysis has begun however is a more rigorous study of how citizens can interpret such data and the role played by the various media in supplying these data

the circular economy swings and roundabouts abstract in the last few decades the circular economy has increasingly been advertised as an economic model that can replace the current linear economy whilst addressing the issues of environmental deterioration social equity and long term economic growth with the explicit suggestion that it can serve as a tool for sustainable development however despite the individual prominence of the circular economy and sustainable development in the academic and wider literature the exact relationship between the two concepts has neither been thoroughly defined nor explored the consequent result is various inconsistencies occurring across the literature regarding how the circular economy can serve as a tool for sustainable development and an incomplete understanding of how its long term effects differ from those of the linear economy a literature review was conducted to interpret the current conceptual relationship between the circular economy and sustainable development the review highlights numerous challenges concerning conceptual definition economic growth and implementation that inhibit the use of the circular economy as a tool for sustainable development in its current form the review concludes by providing suggestions for how research concerning the circular economy should proceed if it is to provide a potential approach for achieving sustainable development

incomplete information and ideological explanations of platform divergence one of the paradoxes of formal spatial voting models is the robustness of the theoretical result that candidates will converge toward centrists positions and the empirical observation of persistent policy divergence of candidates a solution is that candidates are ideological have policy preferences when candidates have policy preferences and incomplete information about voter preferences then platform divergence is theoretically predicted experimental tests of the ideological model are presented it is shown that platform divergence is significant when candidates are ideological and have incomplete information about voter preferences however candidate positions are more convergent on average than the theory predicts suggesting that subjects value winning independently of the expected payment

what price accountability the lucas island model and the politics of monetary policy this paper develops a model of an electoral cycle in inflation and output based on rational inflation expectations and rational retrospective voting voters are heterogeneous and partially informed about aggregate macroeconomic variables they observe precisely how monetary policy stimulates their local economies but their observations of economic activity in other sectors are imprecise voters extract information about the incumbent policymaker s economic competence from cross sectoral spillover effects the incumbent has incentives to generate preelection monetary surprises that stimulate the local economies and generate cross sectoral spillover effects he thereby creates an impression of economic competence and furthers his reelection prospects his policy manipulations are the price of political accountability on a positive note the incumbent is more likely to survive voter scrutiny if he is more competent than the average political candidate

the circular economy an interdisciplinary exploration of the concept and application in a global context there have long been calls from industry for guidance in implementing strategies for sustainable development the circular economy represents the most recent attempt to conceptualize the integration of economic activity and environmental wellbeing in a sustainable way this set of ideas has been adopted by china as the basis of their economic development included in both the 11th and the 12th five year plan escalating the concept in minds of western policymakers and ngos this paper traces the conceptualisations and origins of the circular economy tracing its meanings and exploring its antecedents in economics and ecology and discusses how the circular economy has been operationalized in business and policy the paper finds that while the circular economy places emphasis on the redesign of processes and cycling of materials which may contribute to more sustainable business models it also encapsulates tensions and limitations these include an absence of the social dimension inherent in sustainable development that limits its ethical dimensions and some unintended consequences this leads us to propose a revised definition of the circular economy as an economic model wherein planning resourcing procurement production and reprocessing are designed and managed as both process and output to maximize ecosystem functioning and human well being

cradle to cradle design creating healthy emissions a strategy for eco effective product and system design eco effectiveness and cradle to cradle design present an alternative design and production concept to the strategies of zero emission and ecoefficiency where eco efficiency and zero emission seek to reduce the unintended negative consequences of processes of production and consumption eco effectiveness is a positive agenda for the conception and production of goods and services that incorporate social economic and environmental benefit enabling triple top line growth eco effectiveness moves beyond zero emission approaches by focusing on the development of products and industrial systems that maintain or enhance the quality and productivity of materials through subsequent life cycles the concept of eco effectiveness also addresses the major shortcomings of eco efficiency approaches their inability to address the necessity for fundamental redesign of material flows their inherent antagonism towards long term economic growth and innovation and their insufficiency in addressing toxicity issues a central component of the eco effectiveness concept cradle to cradle design provides a practical design framework for creating products and industrial systems in a positive relationship with ecological health and abundance and long term economic growth against this background the transition to eco effective industrial systems is a five step process beginning with an elimination of undesirable substances and ultimately calling for a reinvention of products by reconsidering how they may optimally fulfill the need or needs for which they are actually intended while simultaneously being supportive of ecological and social systems this process necessitates the creation of an eco effective system of nutrient management to coordinate the material flows amongst actors in the product system the concept of intelligent materials pooling illustrates how such a system might take shape in reality 2006 published by elsevier ltd

economic integration and mass politics market liberalization and public attitudes in the european union theory theories of how domestic politics influence international economic policy differ fundamentally in their treatment of the mass public a central issue in this controversy is whether members of the mass public form attitudes about international economics that reflect their economic interests this article examines this assumption using international economic theory to identify variation in economic interests regarding international economic policy hypotheses citizens of the european union eu form attitudes toward eu membership an international economic policy that are consistent with their occupation based economic interests methods individual level heteroskedastic ordered probit analysis of eurobarometer survey data and oecd economic statistics from 1975 to 1992 results while controlling for a variety of potentially confounding factors the likelihood of positive evaluations of eu membership is positively related to intraoccupational differences in economic benefits from eu membership

towards a new taxonomy of circular economy business models abstract circular economy has undoubtedly become one of the hot topics in public debates about new and more sustainable industrial paradigms and strategies in this respect the fashion of circular economy is in the fact that it aims at overcoming the dominant linear take make disposal economy model i e a traditional open ended economy model developed with no built in tendency to recycle which is reflected by treating the environment as a waste reservoir su et al 2013 circular economy indeed bases on the establishment of closed production systems where resources are reused and kept in a loop of production and usage allowing generating more value and for a longer period despite the interest for circular economy by politicians and practitioners scholars particularly in the strategic management field are still struggling with a lack of a framework explaining how companies willing to become circular adapt their existing business model or create a new one by extensively reviewing through the lens of business model literature the extant contributions on circular economy we propose a taxonomy of circular economy business models based on the degree of adoption of circularity along two major dimensions i the customer value proposition interface i e the implementation of the circularity concept in proposing value to customers ii the value network i e the ways through which interacting with suppliers and reorganizing the own internal activities the taxonomy is then initially tested through some explorative case studies showing in practice the ability of the framework to properly distinguish different modes of adoption of circular economy

imperfectly informed voters and strategic extremism we analyze a two candidate downsian model considering that voters use shortcuts e g interest group media endorsements to infer candidates policy platforms that is voters do not observe candidates exact platforms but only which candidate offers the more leftist rightist platform relative positions in equilibrium candidates behavior tends to maximum extremism but it may converge or diverge depending on how voters behave when indifferent policywise between the candidates when the tie breaking rule used by the voters is sufficiently fair candidates converge to the extreme preferred by the median voter but when it strongly favors a certain candidate each candidate specializes in a different extreme

special issue of games and economic behavior in honor of richard d mckelvey richard d mckelvey died on april 22 2002 at the age of 57 and the social sciences lost a great scholar he will be especially missed by fellow game theorists and academics who use game theory in their scholarly studies of economic and political institutions and behavior his students colleagues and friends will also miss a very humble and thoughtful human being who unselfishly contributed his time and intellectual energies throughout his career he influenced the careers of many of us and worked hard for many organizations and journals this journal in particular

majority rule and election models abstract this paper surveys the theoretical work that has been done on majority rule and economic models of elections section i provides an overview of the topic section 2 reviews the most important results that have been obtained about majority rule as an abstract collective choice rule section 3 identifies some alternative inferences that can be made from those results section 4 covers some models that include additional features that are present in political institutions where majority rule is used section 5 concentrates on some alternative election models and equilibrium concepts section 6 focuses on election models with abstentions and or candidate uncertainty about voter behaviour section 7 compares and contrasts models where candidates are certain about what the voters choices will be contingent upon about the choices made by the candidates and models where they are uncertain about those choices section 8 closes the survey by identifying some emerging areas of research

sequential voting with endogenous voter forecasts we investigate a sequential voting model in which voters forecasts of outcomes on future issues are determined endogenously voters are assumed to make decisions in an environment in which future outcomes are uncertain the uncertainty arises from two possible sources voters may be uncertain of other voters preferences in addition events that occur before future issues are decided may affect voters preferences on future votes information available to voters at each point in time is characterized an equilibrium to the voting problem if one exists is one for which the outcome on the issue currently being decided and voters forecasts of outcomes on future issues are determined simultaneously we show that an equilibrium exists under a particular voting institution and characterize voters forecasts for this equilibrium

elections with limited information a fulfilled expectations model using contemporaneous poll and endorsement data as information sources a one dimensional model of two candidate elections under asymmetric information is theoretically developed and experimentally tested candidates do not know voter utility functions and most voters are uninformed about candidate policy positions a fulfilled expectations equilibrium is defined using poll and endorsement data as information sources it is proved that with any positive fraction of informed voters any equilibrium extracts all available information all participants voters and candidates alike act as if they were fully informed for fixed candidate strategies a dynamic is given for convergence to voter equilibrium and this process is shown to imply a bandwagon effect

a review on circular economy the expected transition to a balanced interplay of environmental and economic systems el articulo muestra un estudio en donde se proporciona una revision extensa de la literatura de las dos ultimas decadas con el proposito de captar las principales caracteristicas y perspectivas de la ce economia circular origenes principios basicos ventajas y desventajas modelado e implementacion de ce en los diferentes niveles micro meso y macro en todo el mundo los resultados demuestran que los origenes de la ce se basan principalmente en la economia ecologica y ecologia industrial

towards a national circular economy indicator system in china an evaluation and critical analysis abstract it is widely acknowledged that china s economic miracle has been achieved at the expense of its natural capital and environment in order to deal with this problem the circular economy ce has been chosen as a national policy for sustainable development national laws and regulations have been enacted to facilitate the implementation of ce and national ce demonstration projects have been initiated such that national benchmarking activities could be completed china is the first country to release nationally focused ce indicators so that objective and credible information on the status of ce implementation can be recognized these ce indicators are valuable metrics for policy and decision makers and can help achieve ce goals and outcomes this unique indicator system has not been communicated to international communities this paper aims to more broadly introduce this unique national ce indicator system china s ce efforts are first detailed with various provisions of the national indicator system a critical analysis of such an indicator system is presented we show that certain benefits can be gained but substantive revision is also needed due to the lack of a comprehensive set of sustainability indicators which should include social business indicators urban industrial symbiosis absolute material energy reduction and prevention oriented indicators concerns related to barriers on implementation are also presented in this paper the knowledge gained from chinese efforts on ce indicators are valuable to both developed and developing nations seeking to implement sustainable development measures within their regulatory policies

the swing voters blessing abstract two candidates commit to policy platforms before an election takes place all voters care about the quality of the candidates as well as the policies they offer however the quality differences are only observable to a limited number of informed voters i show that if all uninformed voters are fully rational they follow a strategy of making their voting decisions dependent only on the position of their own policy bliss point relative to the median bliss point as in the standard case with only informed voters the candidate who is preferred by the median voter wins in equilibrium this is the higher quality candidate and the policy implemented is the same as if all voters had been fully informed i show that the existence of boundedly rational uninformed swing voters increases the welfare of the majority of voters these swing voters do not consider the fact that their vote influences their utility only when their vote is pivotal consequently they always support the candidate whose policy platform they prefer in this scenario the winning high quality candidate s policy is closer to the median voter s bliss point this swing voters blessing increases the welfare of the majority of voters

sharing cities and sustainable consumption and production towards an integrated framework calls for a transformation towards more sustainable consumption and production scp have been intensifying as urban populations swell across the planet cities are faced with increasing pressure on infrastructure economic and ecological systems yet with their high population densities and ubiquity of information and communication technologies cities are becoming breeding grounds for a new circular economy driven by emerging and long standing sharing activities this research provides a comprehensive view of scp systems in cities by integrating and examining sharing economy activities in the context of two continuums i e scp and private public orientation based on these two analytical dimensions the paper evaluates and plots five groups of 18 sharing activities to create a sharing cities scp typology comprised by five ideal types each of these five types represents a unique form of scp activity with the potential to directly impact scp systems in the context of urban environments by enabling diversity and hybridity in the scp analysis we allow for a theoretical expansion of scp models and a new way of understanding how they may play out in cities

an information rationale for the power of special interests political decisions are often biased in favor of special interests at the expense of the general public and they are frequently inefficient in the sense that the losses incurred by the majority exceed the gains enjoyed by the minority this article explains the bias in terms of information asymmetries and the free rider problem first incumbents increase their reelection prospects by biasing policy toward groups that are better able to monitor their activities second because smaller groups are better able to overcome the free rider problem of costly monitoring policy will be biased in their favor third the effect of asymmetric monitoring on voter welfare is ambiguous the inefficiencies created by the policy bias are offset by a positively valued selection bias incumbents of above average quality are more likely to survive voter scrutiny than are low quality types

public protests and policy making technological advances and the development of social media have made petitions public protests and other form of spontaneous activism increasingly common tools for individuals to influence decision makers to study these phenomena in this article i present a theory of petitions and public protests that explores their limits as mechanisms to aggregate information the key assumption is that valuable information is dispersed among citizens through petitions and protests citizens can signal their private information to the policy maker who can then choose to use it or not i first show that if citizens individual signals are not sufficiently precise information aggregation is impossible no matter how large is the population of informed citizens even if the conflict with the policy maker is small i then characterize the conditions on conflict and the signal structure that guarantee information aggregation when these conditions are satisfied i show that full information aggregation is possible as the population grows to infinity when they are not satisfied i show that information aggregation may still be possible if social media are available

is product durability better for environment and for economic efficiency a comparative assessment applying lca and lcc to two energy intensive products abstract the importance of product durability is becoming increasingly recognised as europe strives to move towards a circular economy where products are designed and manufactured in a way that helps save resources and minimize waste however till now no agreement has been reached on the potential benefits that increased durability of products may yield especially for energy using products there is an increasing debate on whether greater environmental and cost benefits are achieved through extending the lifetime of the product or rather by replacing it with a new more energy efficient model the aim of this work is thus to investigate if and in which conditions extended durability of energy intensive products is desirable from an environmental and an economic perspective in order to assess the environmental impact of increased durability of products life cycle assessment lca and life cycle costing lcc have been applied to perform a comparative analysis between a durable and a standard option for two different products domestic refrigerator and freezer and domestic electric oven several sensitivity analyses have been performed on purchase price cost of electricity energy efficiency according to the results of this study if from an economic point of view for the user more durable products are practically always the preferred choice this is not always the case from the environmental point of view only when the production and end of life stages have very high impacts compared to the use phase the more durable option is preferred from both an economic and an environmental point of view

green circular bio economy a comparative analysis of sustainability avenues despite their evidently different assumptions and operationalization strategies the concepts of circular economy green economy and bioeconomy are joined by the common ideal to reconcile economic environmental and social goals the three concepts are currently mainstreamed in academia and policy making as key sustainability avenues but a comparative analysis of such concepts is missing the aim of this article is thus to comprehensively analyse the diversity within and between such concepts the results are drawn from a bibliometric review of almost two thousand scientific articles published within the last three decades coupled with a conceptual analysis we find that for what concerns environmental sustainability green economy acts as an umbrella concept including elements from circular economy and bioeconomy concepts e g eco efficiency renewables as well as additional ideas e g nature based solutions in particular circular economy and bioeconomy are resource focused whereas in principle green economy acknowledges the underpinning role of all ecological processes regarding the social dimension green economy is more inclusive of some aspects at local level e g eco tourism education while there is an emerging discussion in bioeconomy literature around local processes in terms of biosecurity and rural policies when considering weak strong sustainability visions all concepts remain limited in questioning economic growth by comparing the different sustainability strategies promoted by these concepts we do not advocate for their substitutability but for their clarification and reciprocal integration the findings are discussed in light of the concepts synergies and limits with the purpose to inform research and policy implementation

polarized platforms and moderate policies with checks and balances abstract in standard spatial models of elections parties with policy preferences take divergent positions their platform positions are less separated than are the parties ideal policies if policy is the result of an executive legislative compromise the policy preferences of the parties can be moderated by voter behavior divided government may result since parties anticipate the moderated outcomes they have an added incentive to choose separated platforms consequently divergence in platforms is greater than in the standard model especially when uncertainty is high and the legislature more powerful than the executive for some parameters parties may even posture by adopting platforms that are more extreme than their true ideal points

beyond sustainability transforming industrial zero valued residues into increasing economic returns abstract excessive industrialization is creating enormous economic gaps chaos and unequal societies that are approaching dangerous limits simultaneously large quantities of residues waste and ecological footprints have been created in detriment to the natural environment and the quality of life of most of the planet s population mainly in developing regions this presents most innovators with a new dilemma invest in sustainable long term projects with low economic returns or innovate in short term incremental production and negotiate the environmental harm caused by an excessive industrialization in fact a significant milestone emerges from these arguments somehow we must reverse the perverse cycle created by industrialization and transform the current ecological footprint into valuable assets for all sub systems of the biosphere a proposal has been designed to go beyond sustainability and create sustainable wealth based on the modification of the conventional growth paradigm that can be used to regenerate regional natural resources and simultaneously be economically competitive and capable of offering important social benefits to the community the proposed framework swit sustainable wealth creation based on innovation and technology has been developed to provide multiple businesses of zero value residue industrial ecology processes zries inserted into circular value ecosystems cves all managed and governed by a sustainable sharing value system for the benefit of a community several cases of the application of the sustainable wealth creation framework mainly in developing countries are described

do polls create momentum in political competition abstract we explore how public opinion polls affect candidates campaign spending in political competition generally polls lead to more asymmetric behavior under a majority rule there always exists an equilibrium in which the initially more popular candidate invests more in the campaign and thereby increases her lead in expectation polls create momentum when campaigning is very effective and the race is very close a second type of equilibrium may exist the trailing candidate outspends and overtakes his opponent regardless of the type of equilibrium polls have a tendency to decrease expected total campaigning expenditures by amplifying ex ante asymmetries between candidates and thus defusing competition when candidates care also for their vote share in addition to having the majority candidates incentives crucially depend on the distribution of voters candidate preferences

an experimental study of the efficiency of unanimity rule and majority rule scholars traditionally claim that unanimity rule is more capable of producing pareto optimal outcomes than majority rule dougherty and edward public choice 151 3 655 678 2012 make the opposite claim assuming proposals are either random sincere or strategic we test these competing hypotheses in a two dimensional framework using laboratory experiments our primary results suggest 1 majority rule enters the pareto set more quickly than unanimity rule 2 majority rule leaves the pareto set at the same rate as unanimity rule and 3 majority rule is more likely to select a pareto optimal outcome than unanimity rule at the end of the game

efficiency of experimental security markets with insider information an application of rational expectations models the study reports on the ability of competing models of market information integration and dissemination to explain the behavior of simple laboratory markets for a one priced security returns to the security depended upon a randomly drawn state of nature some agents insiders whose identity was unknown to other agents knew the state before the markets opened with replication of market conditions the predictions of a fully revealing rational expectations model are relatively accurate prices adjusted immediately to near rational expectations prices profits of insiders were virtually indistinguishable from non insiders and efficiency levels converged to near 100 percent

does political knowledge increase turnout evidence from the 1997 british general election a number of recent formal models predict a positive effect of political knowledge on turnout both information acquisition and turnout however are likely to be determined by a similar set of variables rendering hard the identification of a causal link in empirical investigations available empirical regularities should therefore be interpreted as mere correlations i address this problem by using an intrumental variables approach where the instruments are represented by various proxies of information supply on mass media using survey data from the 1997 british general election study i show that political knowledge has a sizeable influence on the probability of voting and that mass media play an important role in influencing political participation

advocacy and political convergence under preference uncertainty we study the formation of advocacy groups and how they can impact policy outcomes by revealing information about voters preferences to uninformed political candidates we conduct a laboratory experiment based on a two candidate spatial electoral competition setting where the policy preferences of voters are initially unknown and change over time in the control treatment candidates learn about the preferred policy of the median voter through the voting outcome of elections in the advocacy treatments voters can organize themselves into advocacy groups in order to reveal their policy preferences we find that voters often overcome the collective action problem of forming an advocacy group in fact we observe the formation of both informative advocacy groups which convey new information and uninformative advocacy groups which do not overall advocacy groups significantly speed up the convergence to the preferred policy of the median voter however advocacy does not lead to higher earnings as the gains from faster convergence are offset by the costs of group formation

voting as communicating this paper develops a model where voters trade off two different motives when deciding how to vote they care about current decision making they are strategic but they also care about communicating their views about their most preferred candidate so as to influence future elections by influencing other voters opinion and or party positioning in effect voters in this model are intermediate between strategic and sincere voters of conventional models in elections with more than 2 candidates this allows us to better investigate the relative efficiency of various electoral systems our main conclusion is that since voting is used as a communication device electoral systems should be designed to facilitate efficient communication e g by opting for 2 round systems rather than 1 round systems

are campaign contributions a form of speech evidence from recent us house elections this paper investigates the effects of the sources ofcandidates campaign funding on their electoral outcomes withparticular emphasis on whether candidates who rely on a narrowbase of funding suffer adverse electoral consequences anextensive dataset consisting of over 650 000 contributions tohouse candidates in elections from 1980 to 1992 is used theresults reveal a negative relationship between theconcentration of contributions and voteshare for open seatcandidates and challengers this finding appears to havesignificant implications for some of the empirical premisesunderlying the u s supreme court s landmark buckley v valeo decision at the very least it represents an importantstylized fact about us elections that is robust over 1980 1992 period

resource duration as a managerial indicator for circular economy performance abstract this paper provides a new indicator for environmental assessment performance linked to circular economy almost all existing techniques evaluate resource use based on their burden relative to value while the central point of circular economy is to create value through material retention the existing burden orientated techniques are therefore unsuitable for guiding managers in relation to circular economy objectives this paper presents a new performance metric the longevity indicator which measures contribution to material retention based on the amount of time a resource is kept in use the measure is composed of three generic components initial lifetime earned refurbished lifetime and earned recycled lifetime management of these components can be used for decision making and performance assessment in the circular economy the example of precious metals in mobile phone handsets is used to illustrate the general application and suitability of this indicator findings show that for materials to be retained managers should encourage longer lifetime use increase product return levels for initial use and refurbished phones and select the most effective recycling processes available this paper advances performance indicators for circular economy and provides a tool which can be applied at managerial and organizational levels to measure the impact of business decisions on the longevity of precious materials

the history and current applications of the circular economy concept abstract the challenges of balancing industrial development environmental and human health and economic growth in china and elsewhere in the world are drivers for recent resource use and low carbon development strategies that include the application of the circular economy ce concept a central theme of the ce concept is the valuation of materials within a closed looped system with the aim to allow for natural resource use while reducing pollution or avoiding resource constraints and sustaining economic growth the objectives of this study are 1 to review the history of the ce concept to provide a context for 2 a critical examination of how it is applied currently thematic categories are used to organize the literature review results including policy instruments and approaches value chains material flows and products and technology organizational and social innovation the literature review illustrates the variability in ce project success and failure over time and by region ce successes key challenges and research gaps are identified the literature review results provide useful information for researchers as well as multi stakeholder groups who seek to define the ce concept in practical terms and to consider potential challenges and opportunities it presents when implemented

campaign advertising and political ambiguity this paper develops a model to explain candidates strategic decisions to provide or withhold information about policy positions in the course of an election campaign the analysis treats this problem as a game of imperfect information attention is focused on modeling voter suspicion of candidates whose positions are ambiguous specific numerical examples illustrate that candidate decisions about providing information via informative advertising depend upon candidate policy preferences campaign fund endowments partisan reputations and incumbency status the model also provides theoretical underpinnings for empirical findings regarding the effects of campaign advertising

stability and coordination in duverger s law a formal model of preelection polls and strategic voting this paper investigates the dynamics of the wasted vote phenomenon and duverger s law i construct a theoretical model in order to consider how preelection polls serve to inform the electorate about the relative chances of the candidates and how that information acts over time to decrease the support of the trailing candidate the results shed light on how public opinion polls can aggregate information in the electorate and coordinate voters on the viable candidates in the election specifically i show that in a bayesian game model of strategic voting there exist non duvergerian equilibria in which all three candidates receive votes in the limit these equilibria require extreme coordination however and any variation in beliefs leads voters away from them to one of the duvergerian equilibria thus non duvergerian equilibria are unstable while two party equilibria are not in addition i describe how preelection polls provide information to voters about the viability of candidates and can thus be used by voters to coordinate on a duvergerian outcome

retrospective voting an experimental study this essay reports on some experiments designed to study two candidate electoral competition when voters are retrospective voters the experiments consist of a sequence of elections in which subjects play the part of both voters and candidates in each election the incumbent adopts a policy position in a one dimensional policy space and voters are paid on the basis of single peaked utility function over that space for the position adopted by the incumbent neither voters nor candidates are informed of the voter utility functions and the only information received by the voter is the payoff he has received from the present and previous incumbent administrations despite the severely limited information of candidates and voters we find that generally candidates converge toward the median voter ideal point

an introduction to the theory of rational expectations under asymmetric information every good economics textbook contains the cliche that market prices provide signals which facilitate the allocation of resources to their best use in a world not subject to random shocks consumers and producers when faced with competitive prices need look no further than their own preferences or production technology to be able to make a decision they need give no thought to the tastes endowments or technology of other agents however in a world subject to random shocks this is no longer the case agents are faced with the problem of forecasting future states of nature and more importantly of forecasting the impact of these states on the actions of other agents rational expectations theories provide a model of how agents make those forecasts in a world subject to random shocks it will be the case that agents acquire or at least attempt to acquire information about the future realization of the shocks it will in general be the case that different agents have access to different information the fact that information is dispersed throughout the economy has the potential to cause a misallocation of resources relative to what would be the case if all agents knew everything an efficient allocation of resources will in general require the transfer of information from consumers who have some information about their future demands to producers who can take current actions to mitigate avoidable scarcities or surpluses though many classical and neo classical writers emphasize the informational role of prices the standard marshallian or walrasian model of competitive equilibrium does not involve prices transferring information across traders the purpose of this paper is to show that rational expectations models are radically different from walrasian models in an economy where traders have diverse information this is demonstrated by showing that unlike what occurs in a walrasian equilibrium of an economy with heterogeneous information if there is a complete set of insurance markets and utility is additively separable over time then there exists a rational expectations equilibrium which gives consumers the same allocation as if each consumer has access to all of the economy s information this implies that under the above assumptions a central planner with all the economy s information could not pareto dominate the competitive allocation achieved when traders have diverse information and rational expectations this paper makes no attempt to survey the literature on rational expectations the reader is referred to shiller 1978 barro 1981 for a survey of macroeconomics and rational expectations and radner 1980 for a survey of the microeconomics and mathematical theory of rational expectations this paper will however try to outline the evolution of the rational expectations concept from a notion of optimal forecasting to a virtually complete departure from the walrasian model of equilibrium the rest of this section is devoted to a discussion of pre rational expectations ideas

macroeconomic forecasting using diffusion indexes this article studies forecasting a macroeconomic time series variable using a large number of predictors the predictors are summarized using a small number of indexes constructed by principal component analysis an approximate dynamic factor model serves as the statistical framework for the estimation of the indexes and construction of the forecasts the method is used to construct 6 12 and 24 monthahead forecasts for eight monthly u s macroeconomic time series using 215 predictors in simulated real time from 1970 through 1998 during this sample period these new forecasts outperformed univariate autoregressions small vector autoregressions and leading indicator models

polling games and information revelation in the downsian framework abstract we investigate the incentives faced by poll respondents when candidates use polling data to inform their selection of policy platforms focusing on models with a unidimensional policy space single peaked preferences and two office seeking candidates observing a summary statistic from polls that ask respondents their preferences we find that for most environments honest poll response cannot occur in a perfect bayesian equilibrium however simple partially revealing equilibria exist when the poll only asks respondents which party or candidate they prefer when the candidates learn the sample average or see all the data there are partially revealing equilibria that mimic those of the binary message game interpretation of polling data requires knowledge of the equilibrium played as the meanings of poll responses are endogenously determined the analysis suggests that naive use of polling data may be misleading

theoretical contribution of industrial ecology to circular economy abstract circular economy ce currently represents a viable option for countries governments academia and society to transform the linear and semi circular materials and energy flows into circular flows and obtain better sustainable benefits in this sense industrial ecology ie with its tools can assist in the transition to ce therefore the main goal of this paper is to present the theoretical contribution of ie to ce the methodology used was based on bibliometric analysis in the international context with regard to the bibliometric analyses we have identified that the evolution of ce would not be possible without the existence of ie concepts and tools especially with tools such as industrial symbiosis is and eco industrial parks eips furthermore three levels of ie contribution to ce were identified such as conceptual technical and policy aspects finally new ce based researches from an ie perspective with bibliometric analysis and with co citation networks are possible including solid waste management and policies

cleaner production towards a sustainable transition abstract this special volume of the journal of cleaner production was built principally upon articles submitted for the 5th international workshop advances in cleaner production held in sao paulo brazil in 2015 the 43 articles emphasize the imperative need for shifting from unsustainable production and societal patterns to sustainable ones they provide many new technological and or management related approaches to help industries governments and society to speed up the transition to sustainable patterns efforts on defining and solving problems with the special accent upon a sustainable solution for the use of raw materials and energy technological advances product and policy changes are presented and deeply discussed improved corporate management for sustainable societal transitions is discussed highlighting consumer empowerment in sponsoring implementation of innovative cleaner technologies within companies industrial sectors supply chains and countries multiple examples are provided relating the successful combination of cleaner production in policy structures illustrating on how the focused work in production sectors is delivering multiplier benefits and creating conditions to facilitate a leapfrogged path toward sd

toward a research agenda for policy intervention and facilitation to enhance industrial symbiosis based on a comprehensive literature review the normative question what role should governmental policy play to facilitate the development of industrial symbiosis has received considerable attention of researchers however for several reasons the effects of governmental policy actions on industrial symbiosis are still not clear this article proposes a research agenda to clarify the mechanisms of policy intervention and facilitation of industrial symbiosis based on a comprehensive review of industrial symbiosis literature focusing on how policy is conceptualized and studied the results show that existing research lacks an explicit definition of policy and employs a static conceptualization of policy that is reinforced by comparative statics research methods we argue that a dynamic process perspective is crucial to reveal the actual mechanisms through which policy intervention and facilitation affect the evolution of industrial symbiosis building on this view industrial symbiosis research is connected with insights from policy sciences and the case of policy translation of circular economy and eco industrial park in china is investigated in order to illustrate that policy is at heart a dynamic process we conclude with a research agenda proposing that the key to reveal the mechanisms is to identify the sequence of events connecting policy process and industrial symbiosis practices

evidence on electoral accountability in the u s senate are unfaithful agents really punished many have questioned whether voters are able to hold incumbent officials electorally accountable through a retrospective voting strategy we examine u s senate elections from 1962 to 1990 in forty one states explaining which incumbents ran for reelection and their success in seeking reelection we find that an incumbent s deviation from her state party platform decreases the probability that she will run for reelection and win if she runs furthermore the electoral mechanism is found to be more efficient when voters are better informed finally we find that our divergent party platform model provides a better fit than the median voter model

asymmetric information and the electoral momentum of public opinion polls this paper demonstrates that the existence of public opinion polls amplifies the effects of shifts in the distribution of the public s preferences over the issue space on the election s results voters evaluate candidates by their positions on the issue space and by a valence or general ability dimension some individual s the informed have more precise information about the relative abilities of candidates than others the uninformed since public opinion polls reflect the information of the informed high approval for a candidate at the polls signals to the uninformed that he is more likely to be abler however high approval may also reflect changes in the distribution of the public on the issue space as a result the uninformed partly confuse the two effects and public opinion polls tend to reinforce the effects of shifts in the public s ideological preferences on election results a shift to the right that shows up as more support for the right wing candidate at the polls is partly interpreted as a higher efficiency of this candidate as a result he wins with a higher margin than the margin he would have won with in the absence of polls or under perfect information

a case study of a phosphorus chemical firm s application of resource efficiency and eco efficiency in industrial metabolism under circular economy abstract circular economy plays an essential and useful role in china in considering economic and ecological sustainability individual firms as the primary implements of a circular economy are facing many obstacles at present in aspects of resource and ecological efficiency therefore this study presents a set of tools to help decision makers better solve these problems and to guide resource based chemical industries in sustainable development first this study describes resource efficiency based on the sfa of a selected p chemistry firm and identifies the key potential opportunities for improvement using analysis tools and assessment tools furthermore by applying eco design and decision tools a firm level p chemical circular economic system is designed and constructed a phosphorus chemical optimization model is established and relevant successive scenarios are generated finally the corresponding feasible solutions and policy recommendations are proposed to improve economic benefit resource efficiency waste recycling rate and eco efficiency after industry design planning and technological progress the total economic benefit increases dramatically and the recycling efficiencies of accompanying resources f si i and s improve by different degrees the results demonstrate that the economic benefit of phosphorus products increases by 28 5 and p utilization efficiency correspondingly increases from 81 1 to 94 7 the comprehensive utilization efficiency of phosphor gypsum increases to 100 and the eco efficiency could be improved significantly by eliminating the phosphor gypsum stack this study demonstrates that technological progress in mineral processing and the production of associated products is the endogenic motivation to increase economic benefit and improve resource efficiency the method proposed in this paper can be applied duplicated and spread not only within the p chemical industry but also in other resource based chemical industries

spatial elections with endorsements and uninformed voters some laboratory experiments this paper presents a laboratory experiment designed to examine voting behavior within a spatial election framework when subjects are only endowed with endorsement information in the experiment subjects are assigned ideal points on a single issue dimension with the aid of an endorsement their task is to vote for the candidate whose position is closer to them the results show that under these conditions subjects are in fact playing a lottery where the odds of being correct is a function of spatial location the study points out that researchers should be aware of an information bias in models that use this particular information source

busy voters agenda control and the power of information t he correspondence between individual preferences and electoral outcomes is often affected by the existence of information asymmetries among electoral participants and the presence of individuals or groups who exercise some form of agenda control while the effects of agenda control in political decision making are widely recognized the effects of information asymmetries are not as well understood since information asymmetries are fundamental characteristics of most elections a deep understanding of the correspondence between individual preferences and electoral outcomes requires a serious consideration of the effects of information i develop a generalizable agenda control model that takes as given the observation that most voters are not naturally inclined to invest in political information the model allows me to provide a dynamic description of how voters and political elites can adapt to the information problems that characterize political decision making it also allows me to demonstrate the effect of these adaptations on electoral outcomes

electoral competition with informed and uninformed voters i present a model of electoral competition in which candidates raise campaign contributions by choosing policies that benefit interest groups and then expend those contributions to influence voters who are uninformed about the policies informed voters however vote based on those policies so candidates face a trade off between choosing a policy to generate funds to attract the uninformed vote and choosing a policy to attract the informed vote electoral equilibria are characterized for two categories of policies particularistic and collective in the case of particularistic policies the equilibrium policies of the candidates are separated if the proportion of uninformed voters is sufficiently high and the degree of separation is an increasing function of that proportion the model is extended to include the public financing of elections and incumbency advantages for the case of collective policies the candidates locate at the median of the ideal points of the informed voters and contributions are zero

sampling equilibrium with an application to strategic voting we suggest an equilibrium concept for a strategic model with a large number of players in which each player observes the actions of only a small number of the other players the concept fits well situations in which each player treats his sample as a prediction of the distribution of actions in the entire population and responds optimally to this prediction we apply the concept to a strategic voting model and investigate the conditions under which a centrist candidate can win the popular vote although his strength in the population is smaller than the strengths of the right and left candidates

service induced campaign contributions and the electoral equilibrium candidates for office are modeled as promising services such as support for legislation and intervention in the bureaucracy to interest groups in exchange for campaign contributions an electoral equilibrium is characterized in which candidates choose service contribution offers and interest groups choose whether to contribute the model provides several explanations of congressional incumbents success in over 90 percent of their reelection contests a recognition advantage a high personal valuation of the office a lower cost of providing services and policy alignment with high demand interest groups the model yields predictions that are consistent with empirical findings on the relation between campaign contributions and election outcomes