This paper aims at contributing to a better understanding of the conditions of self-enforcing democracy by analyzing the recent wave of autocratic transitions. Based on a game-theoretic framework, we work out the conditions under which governments may induce the diverse public authorities to...

We analyze the allocation of talent across teams in large matching markets with competition for rank. We show that under general conditions globalization in the form of a convex transformation of payoffs promotes the concentration of talent, i.e. it makes positive assortative matching more...

I investigate if, how, and why the effect of a contribution rule in a public goods game depends on how it is implemented: endogenously chosen or externally imposed. The rule prescribes full contributions to the public good backed by a nondeterrent sanction for those who do not comply. My...

This paper considers the optimal design of dynamic research tournaments when the buyer can set time-dependent prizes. We derive the buyer-optimal tournament and show that it entails an increasing prize schedule. Remarkably, this allows the buyer to implement a global stopping rule. In...

Societies today are increasingly reliant on whistleblowing to uncover unfair practices. For policy design it is therefore essential to better understand the impact of socio-psychological factors on whistleblowing propensity. We use an experimental setup to explore the role of “Diffusion of...

This paper analyzes the duration of large economic declines and provides a theory of delayed recovery. First, we develop a formal political economy model that illustrates a simple mechanism of how weak constraints on the political executive can lead to longer declines in ethnically heterogeneous...

We jointly analyze the causal effects of geography, trade integration, and institutional quality on different income groups for developing and developed countries from 1983 to 2012. Favorable geographic conditions tend to discriminate strongly between income groups as low incomes benefit whereas...

This article analyses recent efforts to create a different institutional framework in Pará State, Brazilian Amazon to promote sustainable development. The region is economically peripheral to capitalism. Historically, Amazon river delta has been used as source of raw materials since XVII...