This paper studies strategic delegation in two-player contests for an indivisible prize (as in, e.g. litigation) where one party's probability of winning is determined by the relative investments of both. Even though neither player stands to gain anything from the possibility of one player...

In the twentieth century there was a significant trend towards larger local governments through amalgamations in the western world. Amalgamations provide potential economic benefits but might also give rise to costs driven by opportunistic political behavior. This study uses a compulsory...

The present paper consists of two closely related parts: one which outlines a normative criterion for evaluating the legitimacy of constitutional change and one which specifies a particular proposal of a constitution. The criterion used stems directly from the "pragmatic" brand of...

Using panel data for a maximum of 109 countries over the years 1976-2000, we empirically analyze the impact of decentralization on the occurrence of transnational terror. Taking account of the potential simultaneity between terror and decentralization, our results show that expenditure...

We consider Bayesian incentive compatible and individually rational mechanisms for resolving conflicts between two agents who are uncertain about each other's fighting potential. We model the default option of outright conflict as a probabilistic contest. Examples of such contests may be...

The generalised entropy measure is applied to decompose overall income inequality over several years into one part showing inequality of long-run (permanent) income and one part showing variability of single individuals' incomes over time. By comparing these components of inequality for pre- and...

A product set of pure strategies is a prep set ("prep" is short for "preparation") if it contains at least one best reply to any consistent belief that a player may have about the strategic behavior of his opponents. Minimal prep sets are shown to exists in a class of strategic games satisfying...

Game theory is usually difficult to test precisely in the field because predictions typically depend sensitively on features that are not controlled or observed. We conduct one such test using field data from the Swedish lowest unique positive integer (LUPI) game. In the LUPI game, players pick...

We study costless pre-play communication of intentions among inexperienced players. Using the level-k model of strategic thinking to describe players' beliefs, we fully characterize the effects of pre-play communication in symmetric 2×2 games. One-way communication weakly increases coordination...

Two principals simultaneously appoint one agent each and decide how much power to give to their agents. The agents' task is to bargain over the provision of a public good. Power here means the right to decide the own side's provision if negotiations break down. In equilibrium the principals...