John Duggan (University of Rochester), "Multidimensional Elections" (w/ Avidit Acharya)
An enduring challenge in the political economy of elections is to construct a tractable model of two-candidate elections that accommodates multidimensional policy spaces, heterogeneous electorates, and mixed candidate motivations and simultaneously guarantees the existence of competitive pure-strategy Nash equilibria that feature platform divergence. We establish existence of pure strategy equilibria in a model of two-candidate competition with electoral uncertainty that is general with respect to the dimensionality of the policy space, voter preferences, and extent of uncertainty. Elections are typically both competitive (in the sense that each candidate wins with positive probability) and meaningful (in the sense that the candidates adopt distinct platforms). Candidates may place positive weight on policy and office; these weights may differ across candidates; and one may have an electoral advantage over the other. We provide conditions for the existence of an aggregate voter and characterize the limit of equilibria as uncertainty is removed from the model.
LOCATION:Littauer C, room M-16 STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20260416T203000Z DTEND:20260416T214500Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR