The collection of information necessary fordecision-making is often delegated to agents (e.g. bureaucrats,advisors, lawyers). If both the pros and cons of a decision haveto be examined, it is better to use competing agents instead of asingle agent. The reason is that two conflicting pieces...

Uncertainty about the future preferences of the government may induce policy makers to run excessive budget deficits. As a solution to this problem, economists have proposed to impose a binding debt rule. In this paper we argue that a binding debt rule does not eliminate the distortions due to...