This paper provides empirical evidence that campaign contributions arestrongly associated with market expectations of future firm-specific political favors,including preferential access to external financing. Using a novel dataset, we find thatfirms in Brazil providing contributions in the 1998...

We introduce the notion of a stone age equilibrium to study societies in which property rights are absent, bilateral exchange is either coercive or voluntary, and relative strength governs power relations in coercive exchange. We stress the importance of free disposal of goods which allows for...

We analyze a simple model of local public good provision in a country consisting of a large number of heterogeneous regions, each comprising two districts, a city and a village. When districts remain autonomous and local public goods have positive spillover effects on the neighbouring district,...

This discussion paper led to a publication in <A href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069611001604">'Journal of Environmental Economics and Management'</A> 64(1), 45-67.<p>This paper studies patenting decisions by firms in relation to the negotiation and signing of the Helsinki and Oslo protocol as part of the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air...</p></a>

This paper studies the equilibrium size of countries. Individuals in smallcountries have greater influence over the nature of political decision mak-ing while individuals in large countries have the advantage of more publicgoods and lower tax rates. The model implies that (i) there exists...

See also the publication in 'Social Choice and Welfare', 2013, 41, 671-683.<P> A well known and established model in communication policy in sociology and marketing is that of opinion leadership. Opinion leaders are actors in a society who are able to affect the behavior of other members called...</p>

Collective decision procedures should balance the incentives they provide toacquire information and their capacity to aggregate private information. In a decisionproblem in which a project can be accepted or rejected once information about its qualityhas been acquired or not, we compare the...

We consider a hierarchical organization with two fully rational agents. The goal of the organization is that of selecting the best alternative out of several available, and agents are heterogenous in the accuracy with which they screen the alternatives. We show that, if internal communications...

We study career choice when competition for promotion is a contest. A more meritocratic profession always succeeds in attracting the highest ability types, whereas a profession with superior promotion benefits attracts high types only if the hazard rate of the noise in performance evaluation is...