Trendsetters wish to be perceived as the type that defines normative behavior. Incorporating norm formation in Bernheim (1994)’s model yields equilibria with social considerations concentrating behavior, allowing multiple conformist pools. Refinements link each pooling equilibrium to a unique...

It is shown that rent-seeking contests with continuous and independent type distributions possess a unique pure-strategy Nash equilibrium.

We study the effects of economic shocks on civil conflict at the subnational level using a panel dataset of 5689 administrative regions from 53 African countries with yearly observations from 1992 to 2010. We find that economic shocks, measured by nighttime light intensity and instrumented by...

Any TU-game can be generated from a production economy with indivisible labor inputs. An equilibrium of that economy always exists after a central intervention that taxes income and subsidizes production. The set of equilibrium allocations corresponding to the smallest income tax coincides with...

We study exchanges between three overlapping generations with non-dynastic altruism. The middleaged choose informal care provided to their parents and education expenditures for their children. The young enjoy their education, while the old may leave a bequest to their children. Within each...

This paper considers participation in deterministic contests for m≥1 identical prizes, which employ an auction-like rule to determine the winners. In most papers that investigate such models, participation by precisely m+1 players is associated with players having complete information about...

We study the stability of decision making in committees. A policy proposal introduced by a committee member is either adopted or abandoned in favor of a new proposal after deliberations. If a proposal is abandoned, it is in spite of the committee member who introduced it, who does not cooperate...

We match individual senators’ voting behavior on legislative proposals with 24 real referendum decisions on exactly the same issues with identical wording. This setting allows us to evaluate the median voter model’s quality with revealed constituents’ preferences. Results indicate a...

Welfare economics relies on consequentialism even though many philosophers have questioned this assumption. Survey evidence, based on a representative sample in Sweden, is presented here suggesting that most people’s ethical perceptions are consistent with consequentialism.

Collective household models posit that each household member has access to a fraction of the household budget, called a resource share, which defines the shadow budget faced by a household member. Together with the within-household shadow price vector, the shadow budget determines the material...