Laurent Bouton

Boston University  
Department of Economics  
270 Bay State Road  
Boston, MA 02215  
   
Phone: +1 (617) 353 4140  
Cell phone: +1 (617) 650 5693  
E-mail: lbouton@bu.edu  
   
   
Curriculum Vitae [pdf]

Academic Positions

2009- Present

Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Boston University

Fall 2011

Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Government, Harvard University

Education

2006-2009 Ph.D. in Economics, ECARES, Université libre de Bruxelles
Spring 2008 Pre-Doctoral Fellow of the Program on Political Institutions, Harris School, University of Chicago
2004-2006  Master Degree in Economics, Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
2000-2004 Licence Degree in Economics, Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

Research

My main fields of interest are political economy, microeconomics, and public economics.

Refereed Journal Publications

1. A Theory of Strategic Voting in Runoff Elections, American Economic Review, forthcoming [last working paper version] (also see IED Discussion Paper 210)

2. One Person, Many Votes: Divided Majority and Information Aggregation (with Micael Castanheira), Econometrica, 80(1), 2012, pp. 43-87 [last working paper version] (also see CEPR Discussion Paper 6695)

3. Redistributing Income under Fiscal Vertical Imbalance (with Marjorie Gassner and Vincenzo Verardi), European Journal of Political Economy, 24(2), 2008, pp. 317-328 [last working paper version]

Other Publications

1. The Condorcet-Duverger Trade-Off: Swing Voters and Voting Equilibria (with Micael Castanheira), in Aragonés, E., Beviá, C., Llavador, H., Schofield, N., Eds., The Political Economy of Democracy, 2009, fundacion BBVA, Spain

2. Le fédéralisme budgétaire, in Valenduc, C., Ed., L’impôt et la politique fiscale en Belgique, 2011, Collection Economie, Brussels : Editions de l’ULB

Working Papers

1. Good Rankings are Bad: Why Reliable Rankings can Hurt Consumers (with Georg Kirchsteiger), [September 2012 version] (also see CEPR Discussion Paper 8702, and IED Discussion Paper 222)

2. Majority Runoff Elections: Strategic Voting and Duverger's Hypothesis (with Gabriele Gratton) [April 2013 version] [Technical Appendix 1] [Technical Appendix 2] (also see IED Discussion Paper 241)

3. Divided Majority and Information Aggregation: Theory and Experiment (with Micael Castanheira and Aniol Llorente-Saguer) [January 2013] (also see IED Discussion Paper 242)

3. Guns and Votes (with Paola Conconi, Francisco Pino and Maurizio Zanardi) [First Draft - May 2013]

Work in Progress

1. Get Rid of Unanimity: the Superiority of Majority Rule with Veto Power (with Aniol Llorente-Saguer and Frederic Malherbe)

2. Strategic Voting in Instant-Runoff Elections (with Micael Castanheira and Gabriele Gratton)

4. Redistribution and Targeted Transfers (with Matteo Bobba)