People with a self-control problem often seek relief through social interactions rather than binding commitments. Thus, in self-help groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous etc, members are said to achieve better personal outcomes by mainly sharing their experiences. In other...

The relationship between our general equilibrium model with multimember households and club models with multiple private goods is investigated. The main distinction in the definitions consists of the equilibrium concepts. As a rule, competitive equilibria among households where no group of...

While increasing income inequality in China has been commented on and studied extensively, relatively little analysis is available on inequality in other dimensions of human development. Using data from different sources, this Paper presents some basic facts on the evolution of spatial...

The paper analyses the appointment of the European Commission as a strategic game between members of the EU's Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. The focal equilibrium results in Commissioners that duplicate policy preferences of national Council representatives. Different internal...

We propose a general theory that explains the extent of the state and accounts for related institutions as byproducts of the state's extractive technology. We posit further that this extractive technology is determined by the transparency of the production technology. This theory is applied to...

A key issue in arbitration, which resolves disputes among parties, involves the procedure for selecting an arbitrator. We take an implementation-theoretic approach and provide theoretical, empirical and experimental analyses of this problem. Our findings highlight the problems with current...

To what extent do imposed institutions shape preferences? We consider this issue by comparing the market-versus-state attitudes of respondents from a capitalist country, Finland, and an ex-communist group of Baltic countries, and arguing that the period under the communist rule can be viewed as...