Internet commerce has made it easier to compare prices and shop online.  However, it has also exposed consumers to a new kind of crime in the form of the electronic theft of payment details.  However the skills required to successfully intercept payment data differ from the skills required to...

This paper analyzes secessions through the lens of representative democratic institutions and considers the incentives of partisan political parties to support independence movements.  It points out that, if anything, separatists should expect to receive support from exactly the "unlike-minded"...

Following the wave of democratization during the 1990s, elections are now common in low-income societies.  However, these elections are frequently flawed.  We investigate the Nigerian general election of 2007, which is to date the largest election held in Africa and one seriously marred by...

Vote buying is a frequent practice during election time in many parts of the world. But no research has been done to quantify its effects on voters` electoral behavior. To address this challenge, we have designed and conducted a randomized experiment during the presidential elections of July...

Democracy and media freedom have been suggested as useful tools in the fight against political corruption, but so far their interplay in this fight has received scant attention. We present a game theoretic model which predicts that the corruption-reducing effect of democracy becomes stronger as...

Many variables have been proposed by past studies as significant determinants of corruption. This paper asks if their estimated impact on corruption is robust to alteration of the information set. A Global Sensitivity Analysis, based on the Leamer`s Extreme-Bounds Analysis give a clear answer:...

When optimal policymaking is subject to dynamic inconsistencies (Kydland and Prescott, 1977), but shocks hit the economy after private agents form expectations, there is a trade off between the need to commit to a policy, and the need to retain discretion so as to respond to shocks. Rogoff...

A corrupt transaction is often the result of bargaining between the parties involved.  This paper models bribery as a double auction where a private citizen and a public official strategically interact as the potential buyer and the potential seller of a corrupt service.  Individuals differ in...

In many rural settings, informal mutual support networks have evolved into semiformal insurance groups, such as funeral societies.  Using detailed panel data for six villages in Ethiopia, we can distinguish two types of contracts, in terms of whether payments are only made at the time of death...

This paper models the implications of endogenous group formation for efficient risk-sharing contracts in the dynamic limited commitment model.  Endogenising group formation requires that any risk-sharing arrangement is not only stable with respect to individual deviations but also with respect...