The aim of this paper is to test the performance of the standard version of CAPM in an evolutionary framework. We imagine a heterogeneous population of long-lived agents who invest their wealth according to differential porfolio rules and ask what is the fate of those who happen to behave as...

Confirmation bias refers to cognitive errors that bias one towards one's own prior beliefs. A vast empirical literature documents its existence and psychologists identify it as one of the most problematic aspects of human reasoning. In this paper, we present three related scenarios where...

We extend the experimental literature on Bayesian herding using evidence from a financial decision-making experiment. We identify significant propensities to herd increasing with the degree of herd-consensus. We test various herding models to capture the differential impacts of Bayesian-style...

This paper studies the relationship between corruption and sustainable development in a sample of 110 countries between 1996 and 2007. Sustainability is measured by growth in genuine wealth per capita. The empirical analysis consistently finds that cross-national measures of perceived and...

This paper examines repeated implementation of a social choice function (SCF) with infinitely-lived agents whose preferences are determined randomly in each period. An SCF is repeated-implementable in (Bayesian) Nash equilibrium if there exists a sequence of (possibly history-dependent)...

We study the e¢ cient allocation of spending and taxation authority in a federation in which federal politicians are exposed to electoral uncertainty. We show that centralization may, but need not, result in a loss of electoral accountability. We identify an important asymmetry between positive...

In this paper, we develop an agent-based model of a market game in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the UK government’s 2008-2010 policy on promoting smart metering. We also consider possible supplementary strategies. With the model, we test the effectiveness of four possible strategy...

Many scholarly articles on corruption give the impression that the world is populated by two types of people: the "sanders" and the "greasers". The "sanders" believe that corruption is an obstacle to development, while the "greasers" believe that corruption can (in some cases) foster...

This paper presents an argument in favor of foreign lobbying. We show how foreign lobbying can help internalize cross national externalities and promote social objectives.

This paper argues that uncertain or random voter turnout plays a key role in mediating conflicts of interest between voters and politicians on the one hand and heterogenous groups of voters on the other. Random voter turnout creates an incentive for politicians to seek con- sensus because it is...