Title
Bargaining foundations of the median voter theorem
Abstract
We give a game-theoretic foundation for the median voter theorem in a one-dimensional bargaining model based on Baron and Ferejohn's [D. Baron, J. Ferejohn, Bargaining in legislatures, Amer. Polit. Sci. Rev. 83 (1989) 1181–1206] model of distributive politics. We prove that as the agents become arbitrarily patient, the set of proposals that can be passed in any pure strategy, subgame perfect equilibrium collapses to the median voter's ideal point. While we leave the possibility of some delay, we prove that the agents' equilibrium continuation payoffs converge to the utility from the median, so that delay, if it occurs, is inconsequential. We do not impose stationarity or any other refinements. Our result counters intuition based on the folk theorem for repeated games, and it contrasts with the known result for the distributive bargaining model that as agents become patient, any division of the dollar can be supported as a subgame perfect equilibrium outcome.
Year
DOI
Venue
2009
10.1016/j.jet.2008.06.011
Journal of Economic Theory
Keywords
DocType
Volume
C72,C73,C78,D71,D72,D78
Journal
144
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
2
0022-0531
10
PageRank 
References 
Authors
1.19
5
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Seok-ju Cho1233.48
John Duggan2241145.72