Copyright (c) 2010 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli Recent documents in Cesar Martinelli en-us Wed, 19 May 2010 21:36:04 PDT 3600 http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/14 http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/14 Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:49:26 PDT We investigate the hypothesis that conditioning transfers to poor families on school attendance leads to a reallocation of household resources which enhances the human capital of the next generation, via the effect of the conditionality on the shadow price of human capital and (possibly) via the effect of the transfers on household bargaining. We introduce a model to study the effects of conditional transfers on intra-household allocations, and provide suggestive evidence of the importance of price effects using data from a conditional transfer program in Mexico. Cesar Martinelli Social Policy http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/13 http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/13 Fri, 04 Apr 2008 07:39:16 PDT We develop a theory of media slant as a systematic filtering of political news that reduces multidimensional politics to the one-dimensional space perceived by voters. Economic and political choices are interdependent in our theory: expected electoral results influence economic choices, and economic choices in turn influence voting behavior. In a two-candidate election, we show that media favoring the frontrunner will focus on issues unlikely to deliver a surprise, while media favoring the underdog will gamble for resurrection. We characterize the socially optimal slant and show it coincides with the one favored by the underdog under a variety of circumstances. John Duggan Political Economy http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/12 http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/12 Sun, 02 Mar 2008 15:36:10 PST We model electoral competition between two parties in a winner-take-all election. Parties choose strategically first their platforms and then their campaign spending under aggregate uncertainty about voters' preferences. We use the model to examine why campaign spending in the United States has increased at the same time that politics has become more polarized. We find that a popular explanation -- more accurate targeting of campaign spending -- is not consistent. While accurate targeting may lead to greater spending, it also leads to less polarization. We argue that a better explanation is that voters preferences have become more volatile from the point of view of parties at the moment of choosing policy positions. This both raises campaign spending and increases polarization. It is also consistent with the observation that voters have become less committed to the two parties. Helios Herrera Political Economy http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/11 http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/11 Sun, 02 Mar 2008 15:29:26 PST We investigate empirically the extent of misreporting in a poverty-alleviation program in which self-reported information, followed by a household visit, is used to determine eligibility. In the model we propose and estimate, underreporting may be due to a deception motive, and overreporting to an embarrassment motive. We find that underreporting of goods and desirable home characteristics is widespread, and that overreporting is common with respect to goods linked to social status. Larger program benefits encourage underreporting and discourage overreporting. We also estimate the costs of lying and embarrassment for di¤erent goods, and show that the embarrassment cost for lacking a good is proportional to the percentage of households who own the good. Cesar Martinelli Social Policy http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/10 http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/10 Tue, 15 Jan 2008 08:31:09 PST In an influential article, Alesina and Drazen [1991. Why Are Stabilizations Delayed? American Economic Review 81, 1170-1188] model delay of stabilization as the result of a struggle between political groups supporting reform plans with different distributional implications. In this paper we show that ex ante asymmetries in the costs of delay for the groups will reduce the probability of conflict and will lead to a shorter expected delay. Accurate common information about the cost of delay may lead to no delay at all. In an asymmetric conflict, a wider divergence in the distributional implications of reform will reduce the probability of conflict but will lead to a longer expected delay. We motivate the asymmetric model of delay by reference to Latin American episodes of the 1980s. Cesar Martinelli Political Economy http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/9 http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/9 Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:48:05 PDT We model a two-alternative election in which voters may acquire information about which is the best alternative for all voters. Voters differ in their cost of acquiring information. We show that as the number of voters increases, the fraction of voters who acquire information declines to zero. However, if the support of the cost distribution is not bounded away from zero, there is an equilibrium with some information acquisition for arbitrarily large electorates. This equilibrium dominates in terms of welfare any equilibrium without information acquisition - even though generally there is too little information acquisition with respect to an optimal strategy profile. Cesar Martinelli Political Economy http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/8 http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/8 Fri, 09 Feb 2007 14:17:36 PST This article considers the welfare implications of transfers to poor families that are conditional on school attendance and other forms of investment in children's human capital. Family decisions are assumed to be the result of (generalized) Nash bargaining between the two parents. We show that, as long as bequests are zero, conditional transfers are better for children than unconditional transfers. The mother's welfare may also be improved by conditional transfers. Thus, conditioning transfers to bequest-constrained families have potentially desirable intergenerational and intragenerational welfare effects. Conditioning transfers to unconstrained families make every family member worse off. Cesar Martinelli Social Policy http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/7 http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/7 Fri, 09 Feb 2007 14:10:29 PST A long-run player, with private information about how long the game will last, must precommit to an action and faces a sequence of short-run players who get a noisy signal of that action. Since noise vanishes with time, we might expect a long-lived long-run player to behave as a Stackelberg leader. If so, short-run players may end up ignoring the signal. Then, however, the long-run player would have no reason to actually choose the Stackelberg action. We show that this paradox can be resolved if there is a chance that the long-run player chooses other action by mistake, and the signal is sufficiently informative. David K. Levine Industrial Organization http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/6 http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/6 Fri, 09 Feb 2007 14:04:05 PST This paper studies a situation in which parties are better informed than voters about the optimal policies for voters. We show that voters are able to infer the parties' information by observing their electoral positions, even if parties have policy preferences which differ substantially from the median voter's. Unlike previous work that reach opposite conclusions, we assume that voters have some private information of their own. If the information available to voters is biased, parties' attempts to influence voters' beliefs will result in less than full convergence even if parties know with certainty the optimalpolicy for the median voter. Cesar Martinelli Political Economy http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/5 http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/5 Fri, 09 Feb 2007 13:57:23 PST We model voting in juries as a game of incomplete information, allowing jurors to receive a continuum of signals. We characterize the unique symmetric equilibrium of the game, and give a condition under which no asymmetric equilibria exist under unanimity rule. We offer a condition under which unanimity rule exhibits a bias toward convicting the innocent, regardless of the size of the jury, and give an example showing that this bias can be reversed. We prove a "jury theorem" for our general model: As the size of the jury increases, the probability of a mistaken judgment goes to zero for every voting rule except unanimity rule. For unanimity rule, the probability of making a mistake is bounded strictly above zero if and only if there do not exist arbitrarily strong signals of innocence. Our results explain the asymptotic inefficiency of unanimity rule in finite models and establishes the possibility of asymptotic efficiency, a property that could emerge only in a continuous model. John Duggan Political Economy http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/4 http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/4 Fri, 09 Feb 2007 13:45:34 PST This paper derives a necessary condition for unanimous voting to converge to the perfect information outcome when voters are only imperfectly informed about the alternatives. Under some continuity assumptions, the condition is also sufficient for the existence of a sequence of equilibria that exhibits convergence. The requirement is equivalent to that found by Milgrom [1979, Econometrica47, 679-688] for information aggregation in single-prize auctions. An example illustrates that convergence may be reasonably fast for small committees. However, if voters have common preferences, unanimity is not the optimal voting rule. Unanimity rule makes sense only as a way to ensure minority views are respected. Cesar Martinelli Political Economy http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/3 http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/3 Fri, 09 Feb 2007 13:41:39 PST This paper compares two voting methods commonly used in presidential elections: simple plurality voting and plurality runoff. In a situation in which a group of voters have common interests but do not agree on which candidate to support due to private information, information aggregation requires them to split their support between their favorite candidates. However, if a group of voters split their support between their favorite candidates, they increase the probability that the winner of the election is not one of them. In a model with three candidates, due to this tension between information aggregation and the need for coordination, plurality runoff leads to higher expected utility for the majority than simple plurality voting if the information held by voters about the candidates is not very accurate. Cesar Martinelli Political Economy http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/2 http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/2 Fri, 09 Feb 2007 13:33:30 PST We analyze an election in which voters are uncertain about which of two alternatives is better for them. Voters can acquire some costly information about the alternatives. In agreement with Downs's rational ignorance hypothesis, individual investment in political information declines to zero as the number of voters increases. However, if the marginal cost of information is near zero for nearly irrelevant information, there is a sequence of equilibria such that the election outcome is likely to correspond to the interests of the majority for arbitrarily large numbers of voters. Thus, "rationally ignorant" voters are consistent with a well-informed electorate. Cesar Martinelli Political Economy http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/1 http://works.bepress.com/cesar_martinelli/1 Fri, 09 Feb 2007 13:20:33 PST We present a model of participation in large elections in which the formation of voter groups is endogenous. Partisan citizens decide whether to become leaders (activists) and try to persuade impressionable citizens to vote for the leaders' 'preferred party. In the (unique) pure strategy equilibrium, the number of leaders favoring each party depends on the cost of activism and the importance of the election. In turn, the expected turnout and the winning margin in an election depend on the number of leaders and the strength of social interactions. The model predicts a nonmonotonic relationship between the expected turnout and the winning margin in large elections. Helios Herrera Political Economy