媒杀!1946

"八·一五"光复.国民党抢夺抗战果实,哈尔滨云谲波诡,各方势力粉墨登场. "雪狼行动"暗杀残忍,我党针锋相对,坚决斗争.李兆麟九次遭暗杀,将军之死,扑朔迷离.真凶落网,拨云见日,寒江春晓,曙光普照……     

The game of manifestos!

This paper investigates, leveraging a simple two‐stage game with incomplete information, the motivation behind announcing unreasonable commitments in the manifesto by candidates and political parties. I analyse the expected communication pattern in an environment where legal costs are not imposed for broken promises and psychological costs related to lying are not incurred by candidates. I demonstrate that there is an absence of separation between a high‐type candidate and a low‐type candidate regarding the degree to which they indulge in “cheap talk.” This paper also analyses the introduction of a penalty for broken promises and establishes that an imposition of penalty has the potential to improve the behaviour of political parties by inducing separation.     

Show Them Your Teeth First!

This paper investigates the choice of an interestgroup between lobbying (``words'') and pressure(``actions'') in order to influence a policymaker. Both lobbying and pressure are modeled asstrategic means of transmitting information that isrelevant to the policymaker. However, only pressure isdirectly costly to the policymaker. The interactionbetween the interest group and the policymaker isframed as a repeated signaling game. In equilibriumpressure – in contrast to lobbying – only occurswhen the interest group's reputation is sufficientlylow, and always improves its reputation. It is shownthat (repeated) lobbying cannot completely substitutefor pressure, and that the interest group may beforced to sustain its reputation through lobbying. Weconclude that pressure is typically used to build upa reputation, lobbying to maintain a reputation.