Guest program
CES Visiting Scholar
Contact
Center for Economic Studies (CES)
Schackstr. 4
80539 Munich, Germany
Room:
105
Visiting period:
17 - 29 June 2018
Country
USA
Summary
Political Competition and Optimal Results
Economists generally believe that competition in markets produces good results for society, such as low prices and good quality. When we observe a market where that is not the case, we want to understand why. CES visiting researcher Mattias Polborn is interested in how political institutions affect the “political equilibrium” – in particular, whether the competition between candidates in elections produces office-holders that most voters feel well represented by. In the US, Congress has an approval rating of around 10 percent because the parties are so polarised, and in the 2016 election, the two major parties selected presidential candidates who were very unpopular with most Americans. It is quite clear that the political system is not producing optimal results, but it is less obvious what the institutional problem is and how to fix it.
Mr Polborn uses game theory – a mathematical method for analysing strategic situations that has long been applied in economics to understand competition between firms in different markets – to understand political competition. Currently, he is working on a theory that explains how interactions between elections in different congressional districts lead to self-reinforcing polarisation.
Mattias Polborn’s has been published in some of the leading journals in both economics and political science, including the American Economic Review, American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of Politics.
Mr Polborn holds a doctorate from the University of Munich and was on the faculty at the University of Western Ontario and at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before joining Vanderbilt University in 2016, where he has appointments in the Departments of Economics and Political Science. He is a CESifo Research Network Fellow and has co-authored numerous CESifo Working Papers.