We study the problem faced by firms that invest in a foreign country characterized by weak governance. Our focus is on extortion relying on the threat of expropriation and bureaucratic harassment. The bureaucrat's power is characterized by looking at a general extortion mechanism adapted from...

This paper assesses the contribution of laboratory experiments to the economics of design applied to the electricity industry. The analysis is dedicated to wholesale markets, and reviews the results accumulated to date concerning both the general architecture of power markets and the very...

The Clingendael International Energy Programme (CIEP), the Loyola de Palacio Chair on EU Energy Policy of the Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies (European University Institute), the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) and Wilton Park Conferences (WPC) organize a four-tier program for...

Focussing on their analysis of the optimal public goods provision problems, this paper follows the parallel development of equilibrium models and mechanism design after the accommodation of Samuelson's definition of collective goods to the general equilibrium framework. Both paradigms lead to...

This paper investigates optimal communication mechanisms with a two-dimensional policy space and no monetary transfers. Contrary to the one-dimensional setting, when a single principal controls two activities undertaken by his agent (cooperative design), the optimal communication mechanism never...

This paper justifies the evolution of the college admissions system in China from a mechanism design perspective. The sequential choice algorithm and the parallel choice algorithm used in the context of China's college admissions system are formulated as the well-studied Boston mechanism and the...

This paper studies the optimal auction for a seller who is bound to sell a single item to one of two potential buyers organized in a "well-coordinated" cartel. After discussing the way the cartel reacts to any auction mechanism, we show that if the seller has no way to deter collusion, he can...

Focussing on their analysis of the optimal public goods provision problem, this paper follows the parallel development of equilibrium models and mechanism design after the accommodation of Samuelson's definition of collective goods to the general equilibrium framework. Both paradigms lead to the...

This paper considers the implementation of an economic outcome under complete information when the strategic and informational details of the participation game are partially-specified. This means that full participation is required to be a subgame-perfect equilibrium for a large variety of...