We develop a model in which firms set their salary levels before matching with workers. Wages fall relative to any competitive equilibrium while profits rise almost as much, implying little inefficiency. Furthermore, the best firms gain the most from the system while wages become compressed. We...

This paper examines the effects of inter-school competition on student outcomes by using exogenous variation in the availability of private schools in Chile. Given that naïve estimates of the effects of competition on student outcomes are biased by endogenous entry of schools, this paper uses...

Researchers, policymakers, and parents are giving education reforms involving expanded school choice increased attention. Many view the heightened competition that would presumably result from such reforms as a panacea for the ills currently plaguing the public education system in the US....

This paper studies the costs and benefits of a mixed educational regime in which tax-financed public schools and tuition-financed private schools coexist. In the model, households are not allowed to borrow for education, but have a choice to educate their children in a public or a private...

Why would a political elite voluntarily dilute its political power by extending the voting franchise? This paper develops a dynamic recursive framework for studying voter enfranchisement. We specify a class of dynamic games in which political rights evolve over time. Each period, private...

This paper examines causes of the persistence of corruption among elected politicians in democracies. We study a theoretical model of competition between two candidates who differ both in ability and popularity in a probabilistic voting setup. Each candidate proposes a tax rate and a public good...

Ascending price clock auctions with drop-out information typically yield outcomes closer to equilibrium predictions than do comparable sealed-bid auctions. However clock auctions require congregating all bidders for a fixed time interval, which has limited field applicability and introduces...

We consider a multi-awards generalization of King Solomon's problem: $k$ identical and indivisible awards should be distributed among $n$ agents, $k<n$, with the top $k$ valuation agents receiving the awards. Agents have complete information about each others' valuations. Glazer and Ma (1989) analyzed the single-prize (i.e., $k=1$) version of this problem. We show that in the `more than two agents' problem the mechanism of Glazer and Ma admits inefficient equilibria and thus fails to solve Solomon's problem. So, first we modify their mechanism to rule out inefficient equilibria and implement efficient prize allocation in subgame perfect equilibrium when there are at least three agents. Then it is shown that a simple repeated application of our modified mechanism will distribute $k\;(>1)$ prizes efficiently in subgame perfect equilibria without any monetary transfers in equilibrium. Finally, in the multi-awards case we relax the...</n$,>

We offer a simple general equilibrium model to analyze how economy-wide forces (i.e. shocks to terms of trade, technology and endowments) will affect the intensity of social conflict over the distribution of resources. Examples of conflict activities range from crime to civil war. We show that...

In this paper we model the interaction between parties and candidates to highlight the mechanisms by which parties selecting candidates may discipline legislators. Parties are long-lived institutions providing incentives to short-lived candidates. Citizens have preferences over a multimentional...