Title

Policy Competition in Real-Time

Author(s)

Faruk Gul Faruk Gul (Princeton University)

Wolfgang Pesendorfer Wolfgang Pesendorfer (Princeton University)

Abstract

We formulate a dynamic model of party competition with a one-dimensional policy space. Policy choices at different times are linked because parties cannot change their policies abruptly, instead, policy adjustment happens gradually. Parties are uncertain of the median’s policy preferences at the time they choose their policies. Our results relate the steady state equilibrium of the dynamic game to parties’ beliefs about voter preferences. In particular, we show that for symmetric games, the steady-state outcome is the local equilibrium of the corresponding static Wittman game.

Creation Date

2016-02

Section URL ID

Paper Number

2016-7

URL

http://www.princeton.edu/~pesendor/realtime.pdf

File Function

Jel

O29

Keyword(s)

Policy Competition, Party Competition, Policy

Suppress

false

Series

13