We study the political economy of the environment in autocratic, weak and strong democracies when individuals can mitigate the health consequences of domestic pollution privately as well as control pollution collectively through public policies. We consider a small open economy with comparative...

This paper models liberalization of government procurements as admitting entry of foreign firms in a contest among potential rent seekers. It contributes to the literature on how institutions influence socially desirable outcomes. Liberalizing procurements reduces wasteful domestic lobbying but...

This paper is a brief review of the literature on contests, with focus on rent-seeking. A fairly general contest model is presented. We show that the Tullock contest model and the first-prize sealed-bid auction model are obtained as special cases. Some important modifications of the basic model...