From marketing and advertising to political campaigning and court proceedings, contending parties expend resources to persuade an audience of the correctness of their view. We examine how the probability of persuading the audience depends on the resources expended by the parties, so that...

We present a general model of two players contest with two types of efforts. Contrary to the classical models of contest, where each player chooses a unique effort, and where the outcome depends on the efforts of all the players, contestants are allowed to reduce the effort of the opponent....

Anecdotal evidence suggests that journalists and bureaucrats in some countries are killed when they try to blow the whistle on corruption. We demonstrate in a simple game-theoretical model how murders can serve as an enforcement mechanism of corrupt deals under certain regime assumptions....

Performance budgeting schemes in the public sector have to operate with imperfect performance measures. We argue that these imperfections lead to wasteful fund-seeking (window dressing and lobbying) by the administrative units that produce public services. We develop a game-theoretical model to...

The paper addresses the welfare implications of conditional grants if government failure leads to inefficiencies in the production of regional public goods and services. Conditional grants may improve welfare by setting incentives for regions to improve efficiency. At the same time, resources...

Suppliers play a major role in innovation processes. We analyze ownership allocations and the choice of R&D technology in vertical R&D cooperations. Given incomplete contracts on the R&D outcome, there is a tradeoff between R&D specifically designed towards a manufacturer (increasing investment...

The paper analyzes the welfare properties of voluntary agreements (VA) with polluters, when they are obtained under the legislative threat of an alternative stricter policy option. In the model, the threat is an abatement quota. Both the threat and its probability of implementation are...

What determines the structure of labour market institutions? This paper argues that common explanations based on rent sharing are incomplete; unions, job protection, and egalitarian pay structures may have as much to do with social insurance of otherwise uninsurable risks as with rent sharing and...

We consider a two group contest over a group specific public good where each member of a group has a different benefit from the good. Our model can be interpreted in two ways: Each of the players has a non-linear investment cost in the contest, or alternatively, the returns to effort are...

Many economic and political decisions are the outcome of strategic contests for a given prize. The nature of such contests can be determined by a designer who is driven by political considerations with a specific political culture. The main objective of this study is to analyze the effect of...