Electoral Competition with Uncertainty Averse Parties
37 Pages Posted: 29 May 2010 Last revised: 5 Sep 2010
Date Written: May 1, 2010
Abstract
The nonexistence of equilibria in models of electoral competition involving multiple issues is one of the more puzzling results in political economics. In this paper, we relax the standard assumption that parties act as expected utility maximizers. We show that equilibria often exist when parties with limited knowledge about the electorate are modeled as uncertainty-averse. What is more, these equilibria can be characterized as a straightforward generalization of the classical median voter result.
Keywords: Uncertainty Aversion, Multiple Priors, Median Voter, Electoral Competition over many Issues
JEL Classification: D81, D72
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation