In this paper we argue that two important causes of welfare losses in oligopolistic markets have been neglected. We show that in models where location is endogenous, welfare losses arising from wrong locations or from lack of market coverage may be substantial despite firms competing in prices....

This paper analyzes the impact of a group-size change on contributing incentives in repeated provision of pure public goods. We develop a model in which the group members interact repeatedly and might be temporarily constrained to contribute to the public goods production. We show that an...

This paper contrasts the incentives for cronyism in business, the public sector and politics within an agency problem model with moral hazard. The analysis is focused on the institutional differences between private, public and political organizations. In business, when facing a residual...

Voters often split tickets, voting for candidates from different parties in simultaneous elections. In this paper, I apply a political agency framework with implicit incentives to study ticket splitting in simultaneous municipal and regional elections. I show that ticket splitting is a natural...

We study the percentage of welfare losses (PWL) yielded by imperfect competition under product differentiation. When demand is linear, if prices, outputs, costs and the number of firms can be observed, PWL is arbitrary in both Cournot and Bertrand equilibria. If in addition, the elasticity of...

This paper provides a theoretical model for the coattail effect, where a popular candidate for one branch of government attracts votes to candidates from the same political party for other branches of government. I assume a political agency framework with moral hazard in order to analyze the...

This paper studies party discipline in a congress within a political agency framework with retrospective voting. Party discipline serves as an incentive device to induce office-motivated congress members to perform in line with the party leadership's objective of controlling both the executive...

This paper analyzes a spatial model of political competition between two policy-motivated parties in hard times of crisis. Hard times are modeled in terms of policy-making costs carried by a newly elected party. The results predict policy divergence in equilibrium. If the ideological preferences...

This paper analyzes endogenous lobbying over a unidimensional policy issue. Individuals differ in policy preferences and decide either to join one of two opposite interest lobbies or not to take part in lobbying activities. Once formed, lobbies make contributions to the incumbent government in...

This paper provides a theoretical model for the coattail effect, where a popular candidate for one branch of government attracts votes to candidates from the same political party for other branches of government. I assume a political agency framework with moral hazard in order to analyze the...