Standard models of equilibrium unemployment assume exogenous labour market institutions and flexible wage determination. This paper models wage rigidity and collective bargaining endogenously, when workers differ by observable skill and may adopt either individualised or collective wage...

Prior research on "strategic voting" has reached the conclusion that unanimity rule is uniquely bad: it results in destruction of information, and hence makes voters worse off. We show that this conclusion depends critically on the assumption that the issue being voted on is exogenous, i.e.,...

In recent years, many social scientists have claimed that trust plays an important role in economic and social transactions. Despite its proposed importance, the measurement and the definition of trust seem to be not fully settled, and the identification of the exact role of trust in economic...

This paper focuses on the observed empirical relationship between fiscal rules and budget deficits, and examines whether this correlation is driven by an omitted variable, namely voter preferences. We make use of two different estimation methods to capture voter preferences in a panel of Swiss...

This paper analyzes inter- and intraregional redistribution in a centralized state using the citizen-candidate model. It focuses on conflicting interests among regions and among citizens of varying mobility. If discrimination with respect to place of residence and degree of mobility is possible,...

It is regularly stated that political fragmentation has negative effects on reforms leading to delays or even blockades. This connection is reflected in the ‘weak government hypothesis’ arguing that fragmented governments create higher budget deficits. Although the assumption seems logical,...

Global games of regime change – coordination games of incomplete information in which a status quo is abandoned once a sufficiently large fraction of agents attacks it – have been used to study crises phenomena such as currency attacks, bank runs, debt crises, and political change. We extend...

I discuss instances where a committee wants to deviate from the simple majority rule by adopting an alternative voting scheme for two consecutive binary ballots. The alternative voting rule, called Minority Voting as an Exception (MVE), works as follows: In the first ballot a b-majority rule is...

In many organizations, decisions are taken by unanimity giving each member veto power. We analyze a model of an organization in which members with heterogenous productivity privately contribute to a common good. Under unanimity, the least efficient member imposes her preferred effort choice on...

The paper models the incentives of a politician to delegate the decision making power in a sovereign wealth fund to an independent external manager. It formalizes the learning-effects as well as the increase of transparency of the SWF and the rise of investment possibilities associated with...