In this paper we argue that if the cross-country heterogeneity in productivity is more important than the heterogeneity in government quality, it can be optimal to give more foreign aid to more corrupt countries. We build a multi-country model of optimal aid in which we disentangle the...

Consider an economy populated by males and females, both rich and poor. The society has to choose one of the following marriage institutions: polygyny, strict monogamy, and serial monogamy (divorce and remarriage). After having identified the conditions under which each of these equilibria...

This paper investigates the relation between risk and the degree of financial intermediation in a model with moral hazard. Entrepreneurs can simultaneously get credit from two type of competing institutions:"financial intermediairies" and "local lenders". The former are competitive firms issuing...

We provide an explanation for why estate taxation is surprisingly little used over the world, given the skewness of the estate distribution. Taxing estates implies meddling with intra-family decisions, which may be frown upon by many. At the same time, the concentration of estates means that a...

Worldwide, but in particular in North America and Europe, the grid infrastructure managers are facing demands for reinvestments in new assets with higher on-grid and off-grid functionality in order to promote energy efficiency and low-carbon conversion of the energy sector. To meet societal...

Conventional capture models rely on the idea that regulator is induced to lenient behavior by the regulated firm through offers of monetary transfers, the bribery model, or future employment, the revolving doors model. To avoid socially costly capture, the political principal should then either...

At a Nash-Walras equilibrium, individuals exchange commodities competitively, and, simultaneously, they interact strategically. Under standard assumptions, Nash-Walras equilibria exist, equilibrium profiles of actions are, typically, determinate byt Pareto suboptimal, though not constrained...

We assume a population of infinitely-lived households of the economy split into two groups : one with a high discount factor (the patient) and one with a low one (the impatient). The environmental quality is deteriorated by firm's polluting emissions. The governmental policy consists in...

It is well known that a pure-strategy Nash equilibrium does not exist for a two-player rent-seeking contest when the contest success function parameter is greater than two. We analyze the contest using the concept of equilibrium in secure strategies, which is a generalization of the Nash...

In this paper we analyze a model of proportional representation that allows for both sincere and strategic voting. We prove that strategic voters vote only for the extreme parties in any equilibrium,if the electorate is large.