In this paper we present a model of the behavior of commercial lobbying firms (such as the so-called K-Street lobbyists of Washington, D.C.). In contrast to classical special interest groups, commercial lobbying firms represent a variety of clients and are not directly affected by policy...

Contests are situations in which a set of agents compete for a valuable object, rent or award. The present paper analyzes difference-form group contests, that is, contests fought among groups and where their probability of victory depends on the difference of their effective efforts. First, we...

This paper examines the question of whether it is ethical for company officials to use the force of government to reduce or eliminate foreign competition, using the antidumping laws as a case study. This paper begins with a brief examination of the U.S. antidumping laws, then examines several...

The well-known swap distance (Kemeny (1959); Kendall (1938); Hamming (1950)) is analyzed. On weak preferences, this function was characterized by Kemeny (1959) with five conditions; metric, betweenness, neutrality, reducibility, and normalization. We show that the same result can be achieved...