We study how to efficiently motivate policy-makers to solve political multitask problems. Political multi-task problems typically have outcomes that are difficult to measure. Moreover, there are conflicts among citizens about optimal policies and the agents have the power to tax the citizens to...

We examine whether and how democratic procedures can achieve socially desirable public good provision in the presence of profound uncertainty about the benefits of public goods, i.e., when citizens are able to identify the distribution of benefits only if they aggregate their private...

We examine the impact of so-called "Crisis Contracts" on bank managers' risktaking incentives and on the probability of banking crises. Under a Crisis Contract, managers are required to contribute a pre-specified share of their past earnings to finance public rescue funds when a crisis occurs....

We introduce a democratic procedure with voting-based proposals called "Pendular Voting". It works as follows: An agenda-setter chooses a proposal meant to replace a given status quo. In the first stage, a random sample of the population votes on the proposal. The result is made public, which...

We consider non-cooperative bargaining on the division of a surplus under simple majority rule. We use the "open rule" bargaining protocol as originally suggested by Baron and Ferejohn (1989): Proposals can be amended before they are voted on. It is widely known that there are significant gaps...