This paper presents a theory of rent seeking within farmer cooperatives in which inequality of asset ownership affects relative control rights of different groups of members. The two key assumptions are constraints on lump-sum transfers from poorer members and disproportionate control rights...

We study the provision of public goods when all agents have complete information and can write binding agreements. This framework is in deliberate contrast to a traditional view of the free-rider problem based on hidden information or voluntary provision. We focus on coalition formation as a...

We model intergroup conflict driven by economic changes within groups. We show that if group incomes are low, increasing group incomes raises violence against that group and lowers violence generated by it. We then apply the model to data on Hindu-Muslim violence in India. Our main result is...

We consider mechanism design in which message sets are restricted owing to communication costs, preventing full revelation of information. A principal contracts with multiple agents each supplying a one-dimensional good at a privately known cost. We characterize optimal mechanisms subject to...

The authors characterize optimal enforcement in a setting in which individuals can select among various levels of some activity, all of which are monitored at the same rate but may be prosecuted and punished at varying rates. For less harmful acts, marginal expected penalties ought to fall short...