We investigate the relationship between the time politicians stay in office and the functioning of public procurement. To this purpose, we collect a data set on the Italian municipal governments and all the procurement auctions they administered between 2000 and 2005. Identification is achieved...

Economic theory predicts that military conscription is associated with static inefficiencies as well as with dynamic distortions of the accumulation of human and physical capital. Relative to an economy with an all-volunteer force, output levels and growth rates should be lower in countries that...

When investing in research and development (R&D), institutions must decide whether to take a top-down approach - soliciting a particular technology - or a bottom-up approach in which innovators suggest ideas. This paper examines a reform to the U.S. Air Force Small Business Innovation Research...

The possible negative consequences of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have given rise to calls for public policy to ensure that it is safe, and to prevent improper use and misuse. Human-centered AI (HCAI) draws on ethical principles and puts forth actionable guidelines in this regard. So far...

An arms race for an artificial general intelligence (AGI) would be detrimental for and even pose an existential threat to humanity if it results in an unfriendly AGI. In this paper an all-pay contest model is developed to derive implications for public policy to avoid such an outcome. It is...

Industry size standards that determine eligibility for small business subsidies have vastly increased over the past decade. We exploit quasi-random variation in the implementation of size standard increases to study the effects on small firms, subsidy allocation, and industry outcomes using...

This paper contributes to the literature on competition and corruption, by drawing on records from Calciopoli, a judicial inquiry carried out in 2006 on corruption in the Italian soccer league. Unlike previous studies, we can estimate the determinants of match rigging and use this information in...

Using micro-level data, we examine the effects of Russia's 2001 flat rate income tax reform on consumption, income, and tax evasion. We use the gap between household expenditures and reported earnings as a proxy for tax evasion with data from a household panel for 1998-2004. Utilizing...

We address the impact of corruption in a developing economy in the context of an empirically relevant hold-up problem - when a foreign firm sinks an investment to provide infrastructure services. We focus on the structure of the economy's bureaucracy, which can be centralized or decentralized,...

The monopoly position of the public bureaucracy in providing public services allows government employees to acquire rents. Those rents can involve higher wages, monetary and non-monetary fringe benefits (e.g. pensions and staffing), and/or bribes. We propose a direct measure to capture the total...