Information disclosure in elections with sequential costly participation

Public Choice - Using a pivotal costly voting model of elections in which voters privately have formed preferences over two candidates and act sequentially, I study how different rules for...     

Sister Cities

Two coastal cities in China and America connect through culture At the beginning of the school semester, Dr.Carolyn Bloomer,who teaches Modem China at Ringling College of Art and Design,located in Sarasota,Florida,of the United States,asks students to write down what they know about the Asian country.Two or three lines referring to the Great Wall or local food is usually all the students can come up with.Some freshmen know more and are proud     

Extra votes to signal loyalty: regional political cycles and national elections in Russia

Public Choice - Under the system of presidential appointments of regional governors, which existed in Russia from 2005 to 2012, gubernatorial loyalty to the central government and particularly...     

Three-candidate spatial competition when candidates have valence: stochastic voting

We study the effects of stochastic (probabilistic) voting on equilibrium locations, equilibrium vote shares and comparative statics in a setup with three heterogeneous candidates and a single-dimensional issue space. Comparing the equilibria with and without stochastic voting, we find that under an appropriate level of uncertainty about voter behavior, the model has a pure strategy Nash Equilibrium (PSNE) that is free from several non-plausible features of the PSNE under deterministic voting. This result is robust to extensions to asymmetric density and plurality maximization.     

Recipes for Good Health

After a bumpy ride over the North Pole and Western Siberia,our big Air China Boeing 747 finally began to quiet down and relax as we began our descent into Beijing. Peering through the window, I saw the capital appear at a distance,     

Interviewing to Detect Deception: When to Disclose the Evidence?

Research shows that there are few objective cues to deception. However, it may be possible to create such cues by strategic interviewing techniques. Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE) is one such technique. The basic premise of the SUE technique is that liars and truth tellers employ different counter-interrogation strategies, and that the evidence against the suspect can be used to exploit these differences in strategies. This study examined the effect of the timing of evidence disclosure (early vs. late vs. gradual) on verbal cues to deception. We predicted that late disclosure would be most effective in differentiating between liars and truth-tellers, and that cues to deception in the gradual disclosure condition would progressively disappear due to the suspects’ realization that evidence against them exists. That is, we expected that liars in the gradual presentation condition would become more consistent with the evidence over time. A sample of 86 undergraduate students went through a mock-terrorism paradigm (half innocent, half guilty), and were subsequently interviewed using one of three disclosure strategies: early, gradual, and late disclosure. We measured statement-evidence inconsistencies as cues to deception . Results supported our predictions in that cues to deception were most pronounced in the late disclosure condition. Contrary to our expectations, the results suggested that presenting the evidence gradually may put innocent suspects at a higher risk of misclassification as they seem to adopt a strategy that is more similar to guilty suspects.     

Silk Road Waterways

It was a sunny warm afternoon in late February, when we boarded the Majestic Princess cruise ship for our two-week grand Asia tour of seven cities. Once we were all onboard, the ship thrust off the berth joining the slow waters of the Huangpu River. It took us almost six hours of maneuvering before we set a northeasterly course toward Hakata, Japan. On our particular voyage, the ship, which ordinarily serves Chinese passengers, was filled with people from all over the world.     

Racing Against a Chinese

Traffic in China often resembles a real auto race. I used to be convinced that drivers in Moscow were the world’s worst, and later thought the same of New York cab drivers, but I am now convinced that Chinese drivers take the top prize in the competition. In July 2012, I was a participant of the UN Chinese language group traveling across northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province to