We study a family of voting rules inspired by the peculiar protocol used for over 500 years by the Republic of Venice to elect its Doge. Such lot-based indirect elections have two main features: a pool of delegates is chosen by lot out of a general assembly, and then they vote in a single winner...

We consider the choice to privatize the provision of a public good in a hierarchical model with three layers: a Central Government, a decentralized agency and a (private or public) manager. In a good governance regime the privatization can be devolved upon the decentralized agency while it...

"One Kind of Freedom" di Roger Ransom e Richard Sutch, che contiene una dettagliata analisi sui cambiamenti sociali, istituzionali ed economici nel Sud degli Stati Uniti dopo la guerra civile, ha sollevato numerose controversie. Fra queste, quella riguardante il livello di competizione nel...

We consider the supply of a public good based on a publicly-owned facility. The Government has a choice between provision in-house and privatizing the facility and then outsourcing the production. In particular, we focus on corruption in the decision to privatize and on its effect on social...