Committee voting has mostly been investigated from the perspective of the standard Baron-Ferejohn model of bargaining over the division of a pie, in which bargaining ends as soon as the committee reaches an agreement. In standing committees, however, existing agreements can be amended. This...

This paper analyses a model of legislative bargaining in which parties form tentative coalitions (protocoalitions) before deciding on the allocation of a resource. Protocoalitions may fail to reach an agreement, in which case they may be dissolved (breakdown) and a new protocoalition may form....

We model club formation as a non-cooperative game of coalition formation and surplus division. We show how social norms and individual rationality sustain a particular form of collective inefficiency, namely excessive entry in the joint production and exploitation of an excludable good. We term...

It has been argued that accountability is a public good that only citizens can provide. Governments can put institutions in place that allow citizens to hold public servants to account, but citizens must participate in those institutions if accountability is to be achieved. Thus, citizens face a...

We analyze group contests for public goods by applying the solution concept of an evolutionary stable strategy (ESS). We show that a global ESS cannot exist, because a mutant free-rider can always invade group behavior successfully. There does exist, however, a unique local ESS, which we...

The burgeoning literature on the use of sanctions to support public goods provision has largely neglected the use of formal or centralized sanctions. We let subjects playing a linear public goods game vote on the parameters of a formal sanction scheme capable both of resolving and of...

The burgeoning literature on the use of sanctions to support public goods provision has largely neglected the use of formal or centralized sanctions. We let subjects playing a linear public goods game vote on the parameters of a formal sanction scheme capable both of resolving and of...

This paper studies collective contests with endogenous cost sharing, general effort costs and intra-group heterogeneity of prize-valuation. Our objective is to clarify the relationship between cost sharing, intra-group heterogeneity within the competing groups and the elasticity of the marginal...