Since an enterprise, which is to be privatized, has to be restructured in uncertainty, and the restructuring investments are sunk when the final decision on the sale price is taken, there is an imminent danger that restructuring is not efficient, and there is underinvestment. We consider,...

Compared with the traditional public-finance approach of a monolithic fully informed planner, earmarking of taxation is less likely to be optimal if a principal-agent setting is considered, where taxing and spending are performed by two separate agents which are monitored by the parliament. We...

Compared with the traditional public-finance approach of a monolithic fully informed planner, earmarking of taxation is less likely to be optimal if a principal-agent setting is considered, where taxing and spending are performed by two separate agents which are monitored by the parliament. We...

This paper deals with double lobbying: several bureaucrats participate in joint lobbying to get a high total departmental budget, but they also engage in antagonistic lobbying to reap as high a share of the total budget as possible. The antagonistic lobbying constitutes a contest among the...

In this paper we deal with voluntary and compulsory redistribution in an economy where the enforcement of property rights is costly. Two agents engage in a common-pool contest and two types of potential distortions arise: the waste of resources in the contest and the dilution of incentives to...