Ronny Razin

It Takes Two: An Explanation of the Democratic Peace

In this paper, we provide an explanation of the democratic peace hypothesis, i.e., the observation that democracies rarely fight one another. We show that in the presence of information asymmetries and strategic complements, the strategic interaction between two democracies differs from any other dyad. In our model, two democracies induce the highest probability of peaceful resolution of conflicts. But it takes two for peace; one democracy involved in a conflict does not necessarily increases the probability of a peaceful resolution compared to a conflict between two non-democratic regimes.

From Thought to Practice: Appropriation and Endogenous Market Structure with Imperfect Intellectual Property Rights

We address the problem faced by innovators who have an idea for a marketable product but must hire employees to bring the product to the market. Information leakage implies that newly-hired employees become informed of the idea and may attempt to bring the product to the market themselves. We develop a bargaining model that accounts for this problem. In this model, employee’s rents endogenously reflect the bargaining power vis-a-vis the firm that is due to the knowledge of the information. The model has a unique symmetric equilibrium in which the innovator appropriates a sizable share of the surplus despite the absence of property rights for ideas. We show that this share stays bounded away from zero even as the number of agents required in the development grows to infinity. We also derive the conditions under which monopoly or competition arise on the product market. We find that when the degree of potential competition on the product market is high enough, a monopoly is generated by hiring all potential competitors within the same firm. Finally, the link between intellectual property rights enforcement and industry performance is explored, and normative implications are derived.

Group Decision-Making in the Shadow of Disagreement

A model of group decision-making is studied, in which one of two alternatives must be chosen. While group members differ in their valuations of the alternatives, everybody prefers agreement to disagreement. Our model is distinguished by three features: private information regarding valuations, varying intensities in the preference for one outcome over the other, and the option to declare neutrality in order to avoid disagreement. We uncover a variant on the ‘tyranny of the majority’: there is always an equilibrium in which the majority is more aggressive in pushing its alternative, thus enforcing their will via both numbers and voice. Under general conditions, however, an aggressive minority equilibrium inevitably makes an appearance, provided that the group is large enough. The notable exception is the special case of unanimity rule: we show that aggressive minority equilibria may never exist irrespective of group size. Aggressive minority equilibria invariably display a ‘tyranny of the minority’: it is always true that the increased aggression of the minority more than compensates for smaller numbers, leading to the minority outcome being implemented with larger probability than the majority alternative. We fully characterize the asymptotic behavior of this model as group size becomes large, and show that all equilibria must converge to one of three possible limit outcomes.

Bargaining over new ideas: the distribution of rents and the stability of innovative firms

We develop a theory of the rent distribution and stability of innovative firms. Our theory is based on a model of bargaining over new ideas. The model accounts for the problem of information leakage, namely, the diffusion of information about new ideas among the agents that participate in the bargaining. Our main results draw a link between the strength of intellectual property rights enforcement and the distribution of rents in firms as well as between the size and organization of firms and their stability. Our theory explains why small firms are advantaged in introducing innovation into the market and why spin-outs tend to emerge from large established firms. (JEL: L1, L2, C7) (c) 2007 by the European Economic Association.

Does Polarisation of Opinions Lead to Polarisation of Platforms? The Case of Correlation Neglect

In this paper we question the common wisdom that more polarized voters’ opinions imply larger policy polarization. We analyze a voting model in which the source of the polarization in voters’ opinions is “correlation neglect”, that is, voters neglect the correlation in their information sources. Our main result shows that such polarization in opinions does not necessarily translate to policy polarization; when the electoral system is not too competitive (that is, when there is some aggregate noise in the election’s outcome), then voters with correlation neglect may induce lower levels of policy polarization compared with rational electorates.

Bargaining Over New Ideas: Rent Distribution and Stability of Innovative Firms

We analyze a model of bargaining over new ideas. The model accounts for the problem of information leakage, i.e., the diffusion of information about the idea before and after the idea is implemented. We analyze the effects of information leakage on the distribution of rents within firms and the firms stability to the introduction of innovation. In the model, the distribution ofrents in a firm reflects the distribution of information about the idea. We show how the balance of power between the innovators and their collaborators depends on market conditions and firms size. The model also provides a formal link between the organization of firms and their stability:the model predicts that, a larger firm will tend to be less stable to the introduction of innovation.

Dynamic legislative decision making when interest groups control the agenda

We consider dynamic decision making in a legislature, in which in each period legislators vote between the status quo (previous periodʼs policy) and a new bill. However, the agenda formation process is captured by interest groups, that is, the new bill on the agenda is determined by an all-pay auction among these groups. We show that convergence to the median voter of the legislature arises if interest groups are patient enough but not necessarily otherwise. We characterize the bound on the speed of convergence in a family of stationary equilibria in which policy bounces between right-wing and left-wing policies. We also show that convergence may be faster if organized interest groups represent only one side of the policy space, e.g., when only business and not consumer interests are organized.

Information diffusion in networks with the Bayesian Peer Influence heuristic

Repeated communication in networks is often considered to impose large information requirements on individuals, and for that reason, the literature has resorted to use heuristics, such as DeGroots, to compute how individuals update beliefs. In this paper we propose a new heuristic which we term the Bayesian Peer Influence (BPI) heuristic. The BPI accords with Bayesian updating for all (conditionally) independent information structures. More generally, the BPI can be used to analyze the effects of correlation neglect on communication in networks. We analyze the evolution of beliefs and show that the limit is a simple extension of the BPI and parameters of the network structure. We also show that consensus in society might change dynamically, and that beliefs might become polarised. These results contrast with those obtained in papers that have used the DeGroot heuristic.