The benefits of bureaucratic discretion depend on the extent to which it is used for public benefit versus exploited for private gain. We study the relationship between discretion and corruption in Italian government procurement auctions, using a confidential database of firms and procurement...

We examine the correlation between gender and bureaucratic corruption using two distinct datasets, one from Italy and a second from China. In each case, we find that women are far less likely to be investigated for corruption than men. In our Italian data, female procurement officials are 34...

Does a more competent public bureaucracy contribute to better economic outcomes? We address this question in the context of the US federal procurement of services and works by combining contract-level data on procurement performance and bureau-level data on competence and workforce...

Open enrollment periods are pervasively used in insurance markets to limit adverse selection risks resulting when enrollees can switch plans at will. We exploit a change in the open enrollment rules of Medicare Part C and Part D to analyze how Medicare beneficiaries responded to the option of...

The transition of the advertising market from traditional media to the internet has induced a proliferation of marketing agencies specialized in bidding in the auctions that are used to sell ad space on the web. We analyze how collusive bidding can emerge from bid delegation to a common...

The efficiency of publicly-subsidized, privately-provisioned social insurance programs depends on the interaction between insurer behavior and public subsidies. We study this interaction within Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Plan (PDP) markets. Using a structural model of supply and demand,...

Evidence on insurers' behavior in environments with both risk selection and market power is largely missing. We fill this gap by providing one of the first empirical accounts of how insurers adjust plan features when faced with potential changes in selection. Our strategy exploits a 2012 reform...

Reputational incentives may be a powerful mechanism for improving supplier performance. We analyze their role in contract awarding, exploiting an experiment run by a firm which introduced a new vendor rating system scoring suppliers' past performance and linking it to the award of future...

The relative wealth hypothesis of Froot and Stein (1991), motivated by the aggregate correlation between real exchange rates and foreign direct investment (FDI) observed in the 1980s, cannot explain one of the major shifts in FDI in the 1990s: the continued decline in Japanese FDI during a...

We study the determinants of the dollar/pound real exchange rate from 1879 to 1914 focusing on the role of fiscal policy. We present a simple dynamic model of the real exchange rate to frame our analysis. The econometric results are based upon the decomposition of the sources of the innovation...