The aim of the paper is to assess whether there is free-riding in teams when team production is sequential and when there is competition between teams. This a common case, which, however, has not been considered in the literature so far. We develop a model where team members contributing earlier...

This paper analyzes preferences in the presence of ambiguity that are rational in the sense of satisfying the classical ordering condition as well as monotonicity. Under technical conditions that are natural in an Anscombe-Aumann environment, we show that even for such general preference model...

Many microeconometric models of discrete labour supply include alternative-specific constants meant to account for (possibly besides other factors) the density or accessibility of particular types of jobs (e.g. parttime jobs vs. full-time jobs). The most common use of these models is the...

Using unique data on criminal profiles of 800 US Mafia members active in the 50s and 60s and on their connections within the Cosa Nostra network we analyze how the geometry of criminal ties between mobsters depends on family ties, community roots and ties, legal and illegal activities. We...

We study how the closeness of electoral race affect the number of invalid ballots under the traditional paper-ballot voting technology. Using a large dataset from the Italian parliamentary elections in 1994-2001, we find a strong positive correlation between the closeness of electoral race and...

The purpose of this paper is to present an exercise where we identify optimal income tax rules according to various social welfare criteria, keeping fixed the total net tax revenue. Empirical applications of optimal taxation theory have typically adopted analytical expressions for the optimal...

This paper addresses the implications of transitory changes in labor market conditions for low versus high educated workers on the decision to acquire education. To identify this effect, I use the improvement in the labor market prospects of low educated workers motivated by the increases in...

This paper deals with a constrained investment problem for a defined contribution (DC) pension fund where retirees are allowed to defer the purchase of the annuity at some future time after retirement. This problem has already been treated in the unconstrained case in a number of papers. The aim...

We consider the portfolio selection problem in the accumulation phase of a defined contribution (DC) pension scheme. We solve the mean-variance portfolio selection problem using the embedding technique pioneered by Zhou and Li (2000) and show that it is equivalent to a target-based optimization...

It is well-known in the literature that income per capita is strongly correlated with the level of democracy across countries. In an influential paper, Acemoglu et al. (2008) find that this linear correlation disappears once they control for country-specific effects focusing on within-country...