RE: Politics and Game Theory
Arham Choudhury wrote: Can someone clarify this situation for me or direct me to material that may help answer this question? Questions very similar to the ones you asked are examined in the following paper: Skaperdas, S and Grofman, B (1995) Modeling Negative Campaigning, American Political Science Review, 89 (1): 49-61. Alex Robson ANU -Original Message- From: Arham Choudhury [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, 16 December 2002 11:27 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Politics and Game Theory Dear Armchairs, A question has been bothering me for sometime. The question involves the hypothetical scenario as follows. (I am new on this list and I hope I have posed the problem in a clear way): Let's assume that the advertisement behavior during elections of political parties in a 'two party' system can be modeled by a tit-for-tat strategy. The parties have the option to engage in either *positive* advertisement or *negative* advertisement. Positive advertisement involves only highlighting the 'good' aspects of oneself, whereas negative advertising involves only highlighting the 'deficiencies' of the other party. If one party uses negative advertising, the other party will do the same and it will become the dominant strategy for all elections. Such a situation is generally not socially beneficial because many people are so put off by negative advertisement that they choose not to vote. Let's assume that this hypothetical political system is stuck in a situation where the two parties are engaged in negative advertisements and the voters are becoming increasingly frustrated with the system. Now suppose that a *viable and credible* third party enters the race (this party has a realistic chance of winning). The first move of this party is to use positive advertisement. Does economic theory say anything about what would happen next? Should the two original parties continue with negative advertisement or switch to positive advertisement (a switch that is socially beneficial). If the first two ignore the positive advertisement of the third party, will the third party soon decide that its dominant strategy is to use negative advertisement? Can someone clarify this situation for me or direct me to material that may help answer this question? Thanks Arham Choudhury __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
RE: Median voter thm. Elementary question
Fred Foldvary wrote: MVT posits a bell-shaped distribution of political views. No, it doesn't. A uniform distribution works just as well. Comes a third vendor. If he is in the center, each now gets 1/3 the sales. If one vendor moves just a bit away, he gets 1/2 while the others get 1/4. So a second vendor too moves a bit the other way. The middle vendor, left with little share, now moves a bit further towards one end than one of the other 2. The equilibrium will be that they will spread themselves so that each gets 1/3 of the sales, 1/6 on either side. This is incorrect. There is no pure strategy equilibrium with three players. [See, for example, Gibbons A Course in Game Theory, or Mas-Colell, Whinston and Green Microeconomic Theory] There is, of course, a mixed strategy equilibrium. Alex Robson ANU
RE: Journal response times
Fabio Rojas wrote: I'd say economics has a pretty decent turn around time. The following are data from a recent paper by Glenn Ellison of MIT (JPE, October 2002). The data are average times (measured in months) between initial submission and acceptance at various economics journals in the year 1999. (The full paper is available for viewing at http://web.mit.edu/gellison/www/jrnem2.pdf ): American Economic Review21.1 Econometrica26.3 Journal of Political Economy20.3 Quarterly Journal of Economics 13.0 Review of Economic Studies 28.8 Canadian Journal of Economics 16.6 Economic Inquiry13.0 Economic Journal18.2 International Economic Review 16.8 Review of Economics and Statistics 18.8 Journal of Applied Econometrics 21.5 Journal of Comparative Economics10.1 Journal of Development Economics17.3 Journal of Econometrics 25.5 Journal of Economic Theory 16.4 Journal of Environmental Ec. Man. 13.1 Journal of International Economics 16.2 Journal of Law and Economics14.8 Journal of Mathematical Economics8.5 Journal of Monetary Economics 16.0 Journal of Public Economics 9.9 Journal of Urban Economics 8.8 RAND Journal of Economics 20.9 Journal of Accounting and Economics 11.5 Journal of Finance 18.6 Journal of Financial Economics 14.8 Alex Dr Alex Robson School of Economics Faculty of Economics and Commerce Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200. AUSTRALIA Ph +61-2-6125-4909 -Original Message- From: fabio guillermo rojas [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, 14 October 2002 8:47 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Journal response times Anyone have any idea why the norm in economics allows referees so much time to do a report? Why its so different from other fields? Is this one of those soft vs. hard field things? Its my impression that the physical science journals all want fast turn around on their referee reports. Anybody know what its like with Anthropology, Sociology, or Political Science? I'd say economics has a pretty decent turn around time. I currently work at the American Journal of Sociology and we usually get papers back to authors in less than 90 days, often 60 days. My experience is that top tier journals do better than second or third tier because they often have prestige and staff, which encourage quick reviewer response. Most sociology journals do much worse than AJS. As far as discipline goes, economics and political science is best because their is consensus on what constitutes decent research and you don't have to master every detail of a paper to assess its quality. The worst is mathematics because you really have to understand every symbol in every equation. Humanities are also bad - you don't have to understand every word, but humanities professors are very unresponsive. On another list-serv, I saw one math professor complain that a 5 page research note had spent *years* at one journal. You can get similar complaints from humanities professors. In the middle are engineering, sociolgy, education and other fields. Most journals get stuff back from 3 months to a year and these fields are in-between fast fields like economics and slow pokes like math. Fabio
