In a model of evolution driven by conflict between societies more powerful states have an advantage. When the influence of outsiders is small we show that this results in a tendency to hegemony. In a simple example in which institutions differ in their "exclusiveness" we find that these...

In allocating goods with no use of monetary transfers, random allocation mechanisms can be designed in order to elicit information on preference intensities. I study the nontransfer allocation of two ex-ante identical objects under Bayesian incentive compatibility, with symmetric agents and...

Paired Kidney Exchange (PKE) programs solve incompatibility problems of donor–patient pairs in living donor kidney transplantation by arranging exchanges of donors among several pairs. Further efficiency gains may emerge if the programs consider the quality of the matches between patients and...

Motivated by a novel stylized fact - countries with isolated capital cities display worse quality of governance - we provide a framework of endogenous institutional choice based on the idea that elites are constrained by the threat of rebellion, and that this threat is rendered less effective by...

Although a pilot national live-donor kidney exchange program was recently launched in the US, the kidney shortage is increasing faster than ever. A new solution paradigm is able to incorporate compatible pairs in exchange. In this paper, we consider an exchange framework that has both compatible...

This paper discusses proposed governance reforms of legal services markets. The model distinguishes between a status quo position supported by a system of professionally enforced collective reputation and forms of governance based more squarely on market mechanisms. We identify a number of...

Formal economic analysis of trade agreements typically treats disputes as synonymous with concerns about enforcement. But in reality, most WTO disputes involve disagreements of interpretation concerning the agreement, or instances where the agreement is simply silent. And some have suggested...

We propose a framework by which to observe the consequences of enlargement of the European Union. We outline the sincere positions of the old and new EU members, using a one-dimensional spatial model to predict a range of stable policy outcomes under two proposed sets of voting rules: qualified...

Extortive petty corruption takes place when a public official elicits small bribes from citizens for providing public services that the citizens are legally entitled to receive. We implement a novel experimental design that mimics this phenomenon and explores bottom-up approaches for its...

Poorly governed (e.g., repressive) countries tend to be located near other poorly governed countries, and well governed countries near other well governed countries. Researchers, by identifying country characteristics (e.g., ethnic fractionalization) that may influence government quality, have...