This paper is the first attempt to study the relationship between public auditor expertise and fiscal performance. I find that states requiring the auditor to hold a professional degree feature significantly higher credit ratings and lower expenditures and debt.

The paper studies the design of popular initiatives in unions of states. We analyze the effect of state-specific threshold requirements on the incentives of a rational campaign organizer who decides which constituencies to target. If the heterogeneity of preferences in a population increases...

This paper finds evidence that more democratic political institutions increase trust. Second generation immigrants with ancestries from 115 countries are studied within 30 European countries. Comparing individuals born and residing in the same country, those whose father was born in a more...

We study a model of strategic persuasion based on the theory of cheap talk, in which a better-informed agent manipulates two decision-makers’ joint decision on alternative proposals. With the heterogeneity of two decision-makers’ value of the outside option, only the decision-maker with the...

We elicit human conditional punishment types by conducting experiments. We find that their punishment decisions to an individual are on average significantly positively proportional to other members’ punishment decisions to that individual.

This paper presents experimental evidence from a simple three-person game showing that many individuals are willing to avenge third-party punishment in one-shot interactions. The threat of counter-punishment has a large negative effect on the willingness of third parties to punish selfish...

We use a 15-year panel of property value assessment data from 351 Massachusetts municipalities. Appraised values grow more slowly in municipalities with elected assessors. When municipalities pass, via referenda, large increases in the cap on tax revenues, value assessments grow faster under...

We consider an axiomatic characterization of the plurality rule, which selects the alternative(s) most preferred by the largest number of individuals. We strengthen the characterization result of Yeh [Yeh, C.-H., 2008. An efficiency characterization of plurality rule in collective choice...

We propose a simple non-cooperative game model in which two fragmented teams compete to increase their performance. The theoretical framework is based on the theory of conflict. We show that, depending on the value of a parameter in the model, the power of the competing teams may be expressed as...

It is demonstrated that a preference profile will generate a transitive majority rule relation if and only if it is not balanced, a single-profile counterpart to a violation of value restriction.