Manipulation of government finances for the benefit of narrowly defined groups is usually thought to be limited to the part of the budget over which politicians exercise discretion in the short run, such as earmarks. Analyzing a revenue-sharing program between the central and local governments...

We consider truthful implementation of the socially efficient allocation in an independent private-value environment in which agents receive private information over time. We propose a suitable generalization of the pivot mechanism, based on the marginal contribution of each agent. In the...

We consider truthful implementation of the socially efficient allocation in a dynamic private value environment in which agents receive private information over time. We propose a suitable generalization of the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism, based on the marginal contribution of each agent. In...

We consider truthful implementation of the socially efficient allocation in an independent private-value environment in which agents receive private information over time. We propose a suitable generalization of the pivot mechanism, based on the marginal contribution of each agent. In the...

This paper studies strongly symmetric equilibria (SSE) in continuous-time games of strategic experimentation with Poisson bandits. SSE payoffs can be studied via two functional equations similar to the HJB equation used for Markov equilibria. This is valuable for three reasons. First, these...

The competitive market structure of a decentralized economy is converted into a self-policing system treating the bureaucracy and enforcement of the legal system endogenously. In particular we consider money systems as constructs to make agents' economic strategies predictable from knowledge of...

In a previous essay we modeled the enforcement of contract, and through it the provision of money and markets, as a production function within the society, the scale of which is optimized endogenously by labor allocation away from primary production of goods. Government and a central bank...