We investigate why a firm might purposefully hire a chief executive officer (CEO) who under- or over-estimates the degree of substitutability between competing products. This counterintuitive result arises in imperfect competition because CEO bias can affect rival behavior and the intensity of...

I study a sequential-move public goods game based on the notion that leadership comes with an obligation; conscientious leadership. Provision by the leader of an amount of the public good below a minimum imposes a psychological cost on the follower which increases his unit cost of contribution....

In order to analyze the severity of sentencing, and to show how the probabilistic interpretation of strategic behavior can be tricky, this paper uses the crime strategic model (inspection game) proposed by Tsebelis. This model shows that any attempts to increase the severity of punishment will...

We study the strategic interactions between the fiscal authority and the taxpayer regarding tax evasion and auditing. We fit this interaction into a Bayesian game and introduce the concept of behavioral consistency, which helps reducing the number of available strategies and models the stylized...

Why does the government not defect from the constitution? This article focuses on the dynamic restraints the government faces under the rule of law: violations against unconstitutional laws are not punished under the constitution. If a violating government cannot commit itself never to reinstall...

Why do rulers play by the rules? We show that the legality requirement under the rule of law implements an endogenous enforcement mechanism supporting constitutionality. Agents which do not obey unconstitutional legal norms are not sanctioned under constitutional rule. A principal who defects...

We study the phenomenon of tax evasion using a simple signaling model, in which the signal is taxpayer's reported income. The novelty of our approach lies in the way we define honesty. Specifically, we advocate the view that there are no absolutely honest taxpayers: all taxpayers may under...

Underlying this work is the idea that there is a problem of strategic complementarity of individuals who choose to evade, which results from the discretionary policies of governments and the strategic implications of the Studi di Settore (Sector Studies), the mechanism used in Italy to evaluate...