Governmental contracts may be renegotiated after political changes. Current governments can anticipate this and strategically distort contracts to influence renegotiation outcomes. In this sequential common agency game, the initial contract impacts elements of the renegotiation process: outside...

There has been an explosion of new forms of communications media for interpersonal communication. There is anecdotal evidence of people suffering from 'information overload' as a result of these developments. This paper presents the results from, and analysis of, a case study of a perceived...

I study the consequences of heterogeneity of skills for the design of an optimal unemployment insurance, using a principal-agent set-up with a risk neutral insurer and infinitely lived risk averse agents. Agents, who are characterised by different productivities or skills, are employed by firms...

Conviction rates in Japan exceed 99 percent -- why? On the one hand, because Japanese prosecutors are badly understaffed they may prosecute only their strongest cases and present judges only with the most obviously guilty defendants. On the other, because Japanese judges can be reassigned by the...

Electoral constituencies recognize favorable policy outcomes in high- turnout jurisdictions (Key 1984 [1949]; Hamilton 1993; Fleck 1999). In the present paper, I evaluate whether underlying institutions might provide a finer explanation of this relationship. To do so, I formally examine variation in...

This paper builds on Faure-Grimaud and Martimort’s [Economics Letters 71 (2001) 75-82] analysis of intermediated contracting. I argue that intermediated contracting permits one form of auditing, in which the sub-contract offered to the firm is examined, contingent on the intermediary’s...

This paper examines the mechanics of intertemporal information provision in {\em dynastic governments}. It has been suggested that ``horizontal accountability," i.e., a system of governance where auditing functions lie outside the executive branch, can ensure credible disclosure of information....

If entrepreneurs have private information about factors influencing the outcome of an investment, individual lending is inefficient. The literature emphasizes improvements through non-market organizations that harness local information through peer monitoring. I investigate the complementary...

This paper examines the political economy of redistribution when voters have asymmetric information about the redistributive preferences of politicians and the latter cannot make credible policy commitments. The candidates in each party are endogenously selected by a process of Nash Bargaining...

We study the problem of a regulator who must control the emissions of a given pollutant from a series of industries when the firms' abatement costs are unknown. We develop a mechanism in which the regulator asks firms to report their abatement costs and implements the most stringent emissions...