The Experimental Prediction In past posts I outlined two different equilibria from my Wartime Elections game which sets the stage in the first chapter of my dissertation. See here for the Opposing Victory equilibrium and here for the Prolonging Defeat equilibrium. In the game the public is given two signals in the context of an election where the nation is engaged in a salient […]
The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear I watched this documentary last night. Like most documentaries most of the information is true but framed in a way which persuades viewers to come to a certain conclusion. The documentary’s thesis (if you want to call it that) argues that for the last 60 or […]
Often I get into a debate with people (mostly students) about the role of morality in politics. The argument usually begins after I after I have articulated some theory of politics which invokes incentive based explanations for some phenomena where the outcome is normatively distasteful. The view that political actors should act in some way preferable to one’s subjective morals […]
I am the co-adviser to the University at Buffalo’s SUNY Model European Union organization, which is a transatlantic collegiate simulation of the European Union in the US. At this year’s simulation, held at the University of Exeter in the UK, several colleagues from Buffalo State College and I decided to organize an inter-campus graduate student conference on […]
Media Bias Those of you familiar with my Wartime Elections model know that I assume the actor, I call the Media (M), to be “unbiased”. Specifically, Nature send a noisy signal to M, and M sends that “unbiased” but potentially noisy signal to the Electorate (E) about the “true” state of the war. You may already be thinking, […]