A model of entrepreneurial choices in an economy with a corrupt public procurement sector is built, providing predictions along two main dimensions. First, corruption is more frequent in sectors where public institutions are large buyers. Second, firms favoured with corrupt contracts enjoy extra...

We develop a framework for optimal taxation when agents can earn their income both in traditional activities, where private and social products coincide, and in rent-seeking activities, where private returns exceed social returns either because they involve the capture of pre-existing rents or...

We examine who benefits when there is a strong leader in place, and those who benefit when a situation lacks a proper leader. There are fractious terrorist groups who seek to serve the same people in a common cause against a common enemy. The groups compete for rents obtained from the public by...

This paper analyses how political institutions, wealth distribution and economic activities affect each other during the process of development. A simple general equilibrium model of rent-seeking political elites with two productive sectors (modern and traditional) is presented. Political...

Using novel indicators of political connections constructed from campaign contribution data, we show that Brazilian firms that provided contributions to (elected) federal deputies experienced higher stock returns than firms that don’t around the 1998 and 2002 elections. This suggests...

We use cumulative reaction functions to compare long-run market structures in aggregative oligopoly games. We first compile an IO toolkit for aggregative games. We show strong neutrality properties across market structures. The aggregator stays the same, despite changes in the number of firms...

This paper analyzes how all-pay auctions with endogenous prizes can be used to provide effort incentives. We show that wide classes of effort distributions can be implemented as equilibrium outcomes of such games. We also ask how all-pay auctions have to be structured so as to induce high...

We study all-pay auctions with multiple prizes. The players have the same value for all the certain prizes except for one uncertain prize for which each player has a private value. We characterize the equilibrium strategy and show that if the number of prizes is smaller than the number of...