Participatory democracy is a process of collective decision making that combines elements from both direct and representative democracy: Citizens have the power to decide on policy proposals and politicians assume the role of policy implementation. The aim of this paper is to understand how...

This paper analyzes secession and group formation in the general model of contests due to Esteban and Ray (1999). This model encompasses as special cases rent seeking contests and policy conflicts, where agents lobby over the choice of a policy in a one-dimensional policy space. We show that in...

We analyze risk taking behavior of banks in the context of spatial competition. Banks mobilize unsecured deposits by offering deposit rates, which they invest either in a prudent or a gambling asset. Limited liability along with high return of a successful gamble induce moral hazard at the bank...