We investigate whether the plurality rule aggregates information efficiently in large elections with multiple alternatives, in which voters have common interests. Voters’ preferences depend on an unknown state of nature, and they receive imprecise private signals about the state of nature...

We provide an explanation for why estate taxation is surprisingly little used over the world, given the skewness of the estate distribution. Taxing estates implies meddling with intra-family decisions, which may be frown upon by many. At the same time, the concentration of estates means that a...

Worldwide, but in particular in North America and Europe, the grid infrastructure managers are facing demands for reinvestments in new assets with higher on-grid and off-grid functionality in order to promote energy efficiency and low-carbon conversion of the energy sector. To meet societal...

Conventional capture models rely on the idea that regulator is induced to lenient behavior by the regulated firm through offers of monetary transfers, the bribery model, or future employment, the revolving doors model. To avoid socially costly capture, the political principal should then either...

It is well known that a pure-strategy Nash equilibrium does not exist for a two-player rent-seeking contest when the contest success function parameter is greater than two. We analyze the contest using the concept of equilibrium in secure strategies, which is a generalization of the Nash...

This paper examines efficiency rationales behind uniformity of taxation for public projects. Let a benevolent risk neutral 'constitutional designer' to set an optimal cost-sharing rule for a legislature operating under majority rule. Then the designer will choose 'more equal taxes' for a country...

This paper analyzes the role of yardstick competition for improving political decisions. We examine how performance comparisons across jurisdictions affect the agency problem resulting from uncertainty about politicians (adverse selection) and their policies (moral hazard). We study two forms of...

We examine the incentives of an interest group to provide a political decision-maker with policy-relevant information and to exert pressure on her. Both activities are costly but may induce the lobby's preferred policy. Our paper provides an integrated analysis of both lobbying activities and...

In this note we show that, for generic plurality games (i.e., voting games under plurality rule), an equilibrium that induces a mixed distribution over the outcomes (i.e., with two or more candidates elected with positive probability), is regular and, hence, a Mertens' stable set. Furthermore,...