This paper presents a model of nations where culturally heterogeneous agents vote on the optimal level of public spending. Larger nations benefit from increasing returns in the provision of public goods, but bear the costs of greater cultural heterogeneity. This tradeoff induces agents'...

Extensive multilingualism is one of the most important and fundamental principles of the European Union (EU). However, a large number of languages (currently 23) hinders communication and imposes substantial financial and legal costs. On the other hand, the reduction of the number of languages...

We analyse assignment problems in which not all agents are controlled by the central planner. The autonomous agents search for vacant tasks guided by their own preference orders defined over subsets of the available tasks. The goal of the central planner is to maximise the total value of the...

In the economic literature the costs of financial crises are typically defined as cumulative output losses until the resolution of the crisis. Given this definition, majority of the empirical studies have documented significant economic costs associated with currency, banking and the twin...

We study a novel dynamic principal—agent setting with moral hazard and adverse selection (persistent as well as repeated). In the model an agent whose skills are his private information faces a finite sequence of tasks, one after the other. Upon arrival of each task the agent learns its level...

We propose a general theory that explains the extent of the state and accounts for related institutions as byproducts of the state's extractive technology. We posit further that this extractive technology is determined by the transparency of the production technology. This theory is applied to...

Using a new data source, the Georgia on the Move Survey, we examine migrantlevel, household-level, and contextual variables associated with the probability that a Georgian household receives remittances. We use propensity score matching to estimate how remittances affect particular types of...

In matching markets the number of blocking pairs is often used as a criterion to compare matchings. We argue that this criterion is lacking an economic interpretation: In many circumstances it will neither reflect the expected extent of partner changes, nor will it capture the satisfaction of...

This paper addresses the fundamental question of whether, in a comparative-advantage context, the gains from trade will be greater when the differences between trading countries are greater. Such a presumption is established. The paper then discusses circumstances that could cause the...

We argue that inter-country comparisons of income poverty based on poverty lines uniformly reflecting the costs of the basic requirements of human beings are superior to the existing money-metric approaches. In this exercise, we implement a uniform approach to income poverty assessment based on...