Electoral Competition with Costly Policy Changes: A Dynamic Perspective
We analyze two-party electoral competition with a one-dimensional policy space, costly policy changes, and random negative shocks to a party's viability over an infinite horizon. We show the existence and uniqueness of stationary Markov perfect equilibria in which parties use so-called simple s...
| Autores: | , , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2023 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad de Barcelona |
| Repositorio: | Dipòsit Digital de la UB |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/213102 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/2445/213102 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Partits polítics Bipartidisme Eleccions Political parties Two-party systems Elections |
| Sumario: | We analyze two-party electoral competition with a one-dimensional policy space, costly policy changes, and random negative shocks to a party's viability over an infinite horizon. We show the existence and uniqueness of stationary Markov perfect equilibria in which parties use so-called simple strategies. Regardless of the initial policy, party choices converge in the long run to a stochastic alternation between two policies, with transitions occurring if and only if parties suffer a negative shock to their viability. Although costs of change have a moderating effect on policies, full convergence to the median voter position does not take place when parties are polarized. |
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