Research in behavioral economics has uncovered the widespread phenomenon of people making decisions against their own good intentions. In these situations, the government might want to intervene, indeed individuals might want the government to intervene, to induce behavior that is closer to what...

Research in behavioral economics has uncovered the widespread phenomenon of people making decisions against their own good intentions. In these situations, the government might want to intervene, indeed individuals might want the government to intervene, to induce behavior that is closer to what...

This paper analyzes multi-sender cheap talk when the state space might be restricted, either because the policy space is restricted, or the set of rationalizable policies of the receiver is not the whole space. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a fully...

The present paper, following the philosophical work of Robert Nozick, intends to develop the approach of simplicity in the economic investigation. This purpose contributes to structure a heuristic for projects of investigation that can serve like mark of discussion of grade projects in the...

What role does government play in the provision of public goods? Economists have used the lighthouse as an empirical example to illustrate the extent to which the private provision of public goods is possible. This inquiry, however, has neglected the private provision of lightships. We...

Recent studies in psychology and neuroscience find that fictional works exert strong influence on readers and shape their opinions and worldviews. We study the Potterian economy, which we compare to economic models, to assess how Harry Potter books affect economic literacy. We find that some...

Bilateral bargaining situations are often characterized by informational asymmetries concerning the size of what is at stake: in some cases, the proposer is better informed, in others, it is the responder. We analyze the effects of both types of asymmetric information on proposer behavior in two...

There are many goals an instructor may wish to accomplish in a course on economic principles. For us the definitive goal is the generation of sensible and active members of a civil society. This is an ambitious goal: it requires that students internalize the economic way of thinking and learn to...

This paper presents a tractable and parsimonious theory of political revolutions in societies devoid of democratic processes. I frame a society constituting a ruler seeking to prevent uprising and a revolutionary leader attempting to induce revolt. Both seek to appeal to a populace consisting of...