In the popularly used ranking method of peer rating, the exclusion of the evaluations/marks given to oneselves is intuitively appealing and has been actually practiced, since a person/university/country typically is biased in favor of itself. This short paper shows that this apparently...

In empirical studies concerning comparison of economic structures and/or structural changes of economies, it is quite useful to employ an aggregate index to describe the structural difference (similarity). This paper offers an axiomatic characterization of the measurement of structural...

No abstract received.

This paper develops two models of the lobbying of interest groups to examine the effect of the number and size of interest groups on rent dissipation. In cases where individuals ignore the effect of the lobbying activities on the rent size, the number of groups is negatively related to rent...