We examine the effects of famine relief efforts (food aid) in regions undergoing civil war. In our model, warlords seize a fraction of all aid entering the region. How much they loot affects their choice of army size; therefore the manner in which aid is delivered influences warfare. We identify...

This paper presents a model of conflict which allows belligerents to recruit both adults and children as soldiers. Warlords fight over the country's productive (i.e. non-military) output, and are aware of the tradeoff involved in recruitment: anyone who becomes a soldier cannot produce output....

We build a political economy model of state policy choice highlighting the challenges to breaking barriers to the adoption of inclusive policies in Africa. We highlight necessary and sufficient conditions for a political leader to gain from implementing exclusive policies: (i) Implementing...

We examine the effects of famine relief efforts (food aid) in regions undergoing civil war. In our model, warlords seize a fraction of all aid and use it to feed soldiers. They hire their troops within a population of farmers heterogeneous in skills. We determine the equilibrium distribution of...

Most natural commons are subject to discontinuities and threshold effects, so their gradual depletion may result in a sudden irreversible loss of the associated ecological services. Yet, it is often impossible to locate these thresholds with certainty. We analyze this context using a variant of...

This paper presents a theoretical model of conflict between two players, with intervention by a peacekeeping force. Peacekeepers are treated as a military contingent, capable of taking sides, acting as a third (independent) side in the war, or remaining inactive, depending on circumstances. This...

We study third-degree price discrimination in the presence of uninformed buyers who extract noisy information from observing prices. In a noisy learning environment, price discrimination can be detrimental to the firm and beneficial to the consumers. On the one hand, discriminatory pricing...

We study the issue of integrating real and financial decisions in a monopoly firm with risk-averse decision-makers. To that end, we combine the decisions of the firm and of the shareholders in a very simple but robust model, with uncertainty in the real market and CARA preferences. We show the...

This paper builds a dynamic model of electoral competition with nonbinding campaign promises. We find that campaign promises by a candidate for office signal her political preferences and public policy that she intends to implement. The reason is that electoral competition induces her to pander...

We examine an economy where professionals provide services to clients and where a professional can sell his practice to another. Professionals vary in quality, and clients in their need (or willingness-to-pay) for high-quality service. Efficiency is measured as the number of matches between...