We study political competition in an environment in which voters have private information about their preferences. Our framework covers models of income taxation, public-goods provision or publicly provided private goods. Politicians are vote-share-maximizers. They can propose any policy that is...

The present paper analyzes situations in which groups compete for rents. A major result in the literature has been that there are both cases where larger groups have advantages and cases where they have disadvantages. The paper provides two intuitive criteria which for groups with homogenous...

The ability of groups to implement efficiency-enhancing institutions is emerging as a central theme of research in economics. This paper explores voting on a scheme of intergroup competition, which facilitates cooperation in a social dilemma situation. Experimental results show that the...

Not enough is known about the responsiveness of individuals, in particular those who tend to work under different incentives, to changes in marginal tax rates. We ask whether changes in marginal tax rates are less distortionary for workers engaged in a contest. To examine this potential...

The ability of groups to implement efficiency-enhancing institutions is emerging as a central theme of research in economics. This paper explores voting on a scheme of intergroup competition which facilitates cooperation in a social dilemma situation. Experimental results show that the...

The ability of groups to implement efficiency-enhancing institutions is emerging as a central theme of research in economics. This paper explores voting on a scheme of intergroup competition which facilitates cooperation in a social dilemma situation. Experimental results show that the...

The present paper analyzes the occurrence of the group-size paradox in situations in which groups compete for rents, allowing for degrees of rivalness of the rent among group members. We provide two intuitive criteria which for groups with homogenous valuations of the rent determine whether...

Consider a setting in which several groups of individuals with common interests (clubs) compete with each other for recognition by other individuals. Depending on the context, recognition may be expressed by these other individuals joining a club, or choosing one club to admire. Clubs compete by...

Decentralizing the allocation of public goods by giving funds directly to communities takes advantage of local information concerning needs, but decreases the accountability over how funds are used; leaving funds open to misuse or capture by local elites. In Indonesia, the World Bank attempts to...

In this paper we provide a political game where agents decide whether to become legislators or politicians. Legislators determine the political institutions constraining politicians' behavior and politicians compete for gaining the power to make decisions about the level of the public good. We...