This paper investigates the effect of corruption on competition in government procurement auctions. Our assumption is that the bureaucrat (i.e. the agent that administers the market), if corrupt, may provide a favour in exchange for a bribe. The favour we consider in most of our analysis is the...

The paper revisits the conventional wisdom according to which vertical restrictions on retail prices help upstream firms to collude. We analyse the scope for collusion with and without resale price maintenance (RPM) when retailers observe local shocks on demand or retail costs. In the absence of...

We examine the effects of emigration and remittances on the corruption experience of migrant household members staying in the countries of origin. We hypothesize that the effects of emigration on corruption can be both positive (via migrant value transfer) and negative (via misuse of monetary...

Large public bureaucracies are commonly regarded as less efficient than modern private corporations. This paper explores how the degree of discretionary power might account for this difference in efficiency. Indeed, increasing the discretionary power of the intermediate layers of an organization...

Do empires affect attitudes towards the state long after their demise? We hypothesize that the Habsburg Empire with its localized and well-respected administration increased citizens’ trust in local public services. In several Eastern European countries, communities on both sides of the...

We propose a theory of supervision with endogenous transaction costs. A principle delegates part of his authority to a supervisor who can acquire soft information about an agent's productivity. If the supervisor were risk-neutral, the principal would simply make the better informed supervisor...

The impact of demand growth on the collusion possibilities is investigated in a Cournot supergame where market growth may trigger future entry and the collusive agreement is enforced by the most profitable 'grim trigger strategies' available. It is shown that even in situations where perfect...

Detailed notes on weekly meetings of the sugar-refining cartel show how communication helps firms collude, and so highlight the deficiencies in the current formal theory of collusion. The Sugar Institute did not fix prices or output. Prices were increased by homogenizing business practices to...

The most important issues in auction design are the traditional concerns of competition policy-preventing collusive, predatory, and entry deterring behaviour. Ascending and uniform-price auctions are particularly vulnerable to these problems (we discuss radiospectrum and football TV-rights...

Flexibility - the ability to react swiftly to others' choices - facilitates collusion by reducing gains from defection before opponents react. Under imperfect monitoring, however, flexibility may also hinder collusion by inducing punishment after too few noisy signals. The combination of these...