A major concern in recent political discourse is that government has become both isolated from and unresponsive to its citizens. Democracy, by definition, demands a two-way flow of communication between government and civil society. ICTs have the potential to facilitate such improved flows of...

The issue of auditor judgment prowess and resultant decision-making success has been an important topic in the behavioral auditing area for many years and has generated a voluminous research literature. However, relatively little literature exists on how differences in individual group member...

An economic elite wants to buy a public asset as cheaply as possible, whose ownership is decided by an incumbent politician who can be of high or low competence. The elite can exert influence through two channels: they can make a take-it-or-leave-it offer for the asset, and they can manipulate...

It is well-known that people resist proposals for change for reasons that are independent of a rational calculation of self-interest. This article explores two sources of resistance that affect public policy advocates in particular: quot;Resonance,quot; (negative associations with past...

This paper evaluates differential prize taxation and structural discrimination as a means of increasing efforts in the most widely studied contests. We establish that a designer who maximizes efforts subject to a balanced-budget constraint prefers dual discrimination, namely, change of the...

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccinations play a main role in the immunization campaign of nations but countries, after a certain share of people vaccinated have to cope with vaccine hesitancy and resistance in population. The goal of this study here is the detection of the max share of...

This paper evaluates direct and structural discrimination as a means of increasing efforts in the most widely studied contests. We establish that a designer who maximizes efforts subject to a balanced-budget constraint prefers dual discrimination, namely, change of the contestants’ prize...

This paper presents a new model of interest groups and policy formation in the legislature. In our setting, the already given party ideological predispositions and power distribution determine the expected policy outcome. Our analysis applies to the case of unenforced or enforced party...

We augment the canonical neoclassical model of trade to allow for interstate disputes over land, oil, water, or other resources. The costs of such disputes in terms of arming depend on the trade regime in place. Under either autarky or free trade, the larger country (in terms of factor...

Unlike the previous literature on mass policy feedback, the present paper argues that a negative message embodied in public policy may foster or dampen political participation depending on social group affiliation. The policy change we use to examine the effect of biased policy (a negative...