In this paper we will seek to provide a political economy explanation for the government issuance of indexed bonds. We will show that the issuance of nominal bonds decreases inflation whenever the bondholders' constituency is stronger than the taxpayers' constituency. We then assume that public...

According to the Lisbon Strategy innovation is considered to be a fundamental element for socio-economic growth in the EU. In particular, since it is estimated to count for about 16-18% of the European GDP, public procurement can be a driving force for this. To support this role in 2007 the EC...

Recent years witnessed a gradual change on how to evaluate successful procurement, in both the private ad the public sector. Indeed from a price-only criterion for measuring success, decisions shifted to a multi-criteria approach where various dimensions of quality, as well as price, are...

In a stimulating paper Piccione and Rubinstein (1997) argued how a decision maker could undertake dynamically inconsistent choices when, in an extensive form decision problem, she exhibits a particular type of imperfect recall named absentmindedness. Such imperfection obtains whenever an...

Among non Exponential Discounting (ED) models, introduced to capture time inconsistent choices, Hyperbolic Discounting (HD) recently gained particular relevance. This paper points out that, for some particular payoff structures, HD can also represent consistent preferences

The paper shows that in a Prisoner’s Dilemma Knightian uncertainty, formalised by multiple priors, may entail cooperation at a generalised Nash Equilibrium. The main idea is that players may have an attitude towards uncertainty that depends upon their available strategies. In particular, if...

In the economic literature the most widely used type of additive time discounting is Exponential Discounting. Recent work however casts doubts on its ability in explaining how individuals effectively choose. In particular a more general form of discounting that gained importance, in both applied...

Individuals choosing among payoffs available at different points in time are considered as rational if they are time consistent. This occurs when their plans of actions are effectively implemented. With time consistent decision makers, the paper points out an interesting dual behavior related...

In recent years internet auctions have attracted much attention. This paper discusses a possible explanation for empirical evidence, notably in fixed-end auctions such as eBay, showing a low number of offers early in the auction, with most of the bids concentrated towards the end of the auction....