The efficacy of a vote by an individual citizen in an election may be defined roughly as the
expected effect it has on the outcome of the election. This is a measure of how much that …

Beck (1975) dealt with essentially this question in a recent issue of this journal. Let me
briefly extend the discussion. We ask our voter for his best estimate of the outcome of the …

Conclusion I believe to have shown that a signalling model of voter behavior is
bothconsistent with neo-classical economic theory, and in agreement withmany of the …

The present analysis is devoted to making an empirically based choice among alternate
causal explanations. This entails making causal inferences from statistical correlations …

The decision to vote has been the subject of much formal modeling in recent years. Much of
this literature appears to me to be using elephant guns to hunt fleas. My criticism concerns …

According to the standard analysis, which is grounded in causal decision theory, the rational
decision to participate in mass elections depends on the probability of affecting the outcome …

Conclusion There are several major insights which this game theoretic analysis has
produced. First, we have shown that equilibria exist with substantial turnout even when both …

Conclusion We have shown first, that if the electoral college was abolished the theoretically
measured power of voters would increase and second, that in presidential elections the …

Although it is widely believed that the probability that any one vote will decide an election is
so small that the prospect of influencing an election cannot explain why rational people …

In An Economic Theory of Democracy, Downs hypothesized that rational, utility-maximizing
citizens would calculate the benefits from voting (as opposed to abstaining altogether) and …