We show that isolated capital cities are robustly associated with greater levels of corruption across US states, in line with the view that this isolation reduces accountability. We then provide direct evidence that the spatial distribution of population relative to the capital affects different...

We present a model of policy development in which competing factions have different ideologies, yet agree on certain common objectives. Policy developers can appeal to a decision maker by making productive investments to improve the quality of their proposals. These investments are specific to a...

Alesina and Tabellini (2007) investigate the normative criteria for allocating policy tasks to bureaucrats versus politicians. While they establish criteria with respect to a number of parameters, they do not give a criterion with respect to the degree of imperfect monitoring. We establish an...

This paper studies the effect of additional government revenues on political corruption and on the quality of politicians, both with theory and data. The theory is based on a political agency model with career concerns and endogenous entry of candidates. The data refer to Brazil, where federal...

We study subgame-perfect implementation (SPI) mechanisms that have been proposed as a solution to incomplete contracting problems. We show that these mechanisms, which are based on off-equilibrium arbitration clauses that impose large fines for lying and the inappropriate use of arbitration,...

A principal can observe both the output and input of an agent who works at a job involving multiple tasks. We provide a simple theory that explains why it may be optimal for the principal to use only an output-based incentive contract, even though the principal can monitor the agent's actions...

This paper reports the results of an experiment on exclusive contracts. We replicate the strategic environment described by Rasmusen, Ramseyer, and Wiley (1991) and Segal and Whinston (2000). Our findings are as follows. First, when the buyers can communicate, discrimination raises the...

Principal-agent models usually invoke the strong assumption that the parties know for sure ex ante whether a variable is verifiable or not. This paper assumes that only the probability of verification is known, and that this probability is endogenously determined. We analyze a principal-agent...