Date & Time: Los Angeles (8 am), Cincinnati (11 am), Bath (4 pm), Munich (5 pm), Beijing (January 12, 12 am), Singapore (January 12, 12 am), Sydney (January 12, 3 am)

Marco Sahm will present the paper titled "Party Politics: A Contest Perspective".

This talk is part of the Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict, an online seminar series with researchers from across the world. You can sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations (including the Zoom Link for each event) about the Global Seminar here: Max-Planck-Institut für Steuerrecht und Öffentliche Finanzen: Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict (mpg.de).

Abstract of the Paper:
Intra-party contests, such as the US primaries, are often used to select a candidate for a subsequent cross-party election. A more accurate selection may improve the quality of the candidate but detract more resources from the subsequent campaign. We model this trade-off as a problem of contest design and show that polarized accuracy levels are optimal: maximum accuracy if the potential candidates are sufficiently heterogeneous, and a highly random selection otherwise. Our results shed light upon the paradox of boundedly democratic party structures.

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan