What are bid-protests? What functions do they perform? This article proposes that government contracting, especially the source-selection process, gives rise to a particularly intractable set of transactional hazards: governmental opportunism, involving elected officials and public employees,...

Government contracting is rife with miscommunication and misperception, sometimes unavoidably, and is often associated with secrecy, autarky, and opportunism. These qualities undermine trust, increase contracting costs, and reduce effective collaboration between business and government. In this...

What do appeals of administrative decisions tell us about the processes that give rise to them? Bid protests of Department of Defense source selections are illustrative. Rejected bidders can appeal to the Government Accountability Office. GAO sustains protests – few, but costly and growing –...

Three paradoxes afflict mediation. First, if self-determination is a psychological need motivating the parties and the mediator, how can the parties and the mediator jointly satisfy their potentially conflicting needs? Second, if parties are having difficulty resolving their conflicting...

Based on the indirect arbitrage opportunities afforded citizens by tax-exempt debt issue, this article presents a model establishing equilibrium in the market for tax-exempt debt. The model yields two predictions. Increases in Federal income tax rates increase the spread between taxable and...

In this paper we leverage a national panel of US municipalities to show that a pair of heuristics identified from the behavioral economics literature, anchoring and the bandwagon effect, help to explain the number of years of expenses municipalities hold in reserve. We build our empirical case...

An age-old issue is how inquiry and action can reciprocally contribute to transforming existing into preferred conditions. Leading scholars of a recent generation repeatedly addressed this general issue in human affairs. Herbert Simon's major proposal was to develop design-oriented sciences or,...

This article raises several issues regarding the valuation and disclosure of pension commitments, quasi-commitments, and guarantees. We all know that the annual process of budgetary decision-making is prone to myopia and to tunnel vision. The long-term consequences of fiscal commitments are...

In recent years, scholars have developed new analytical tools and financial instruments that could help governments cope more effectively with financial volatility. In this essay we show how states can achieve fiscal sustainability using financial instruments based upon mean-variance analysis:...

In recent years, scholars have developed new analytical tools and financial instruments that could help governments cope more effectively with financial volatility. In this essay we show how states can achieve fiscal sustainability using financial instruments based upon mean-variance analysis:...