We present a non-technical account of ambiguity in strategic games and show how it may be applied to economics and social sciences. Optimistic and pessimistic responses to ambiguity are formally modelled. We show that pessimism has the effect of increasing (decreasing) equilibrium prices under...

In this paper we examine a class of local crimes that involve perfectly mobile criminals, and perfectly immobile criminal opportunities. We focus on local non-rival crime deterrence that is more efficient against criminals pursuing domestic crimes than criminals pursuing crimes elsewhere. In a...

We provide an explanation why centralisation of political decision makingresults in overspending in some policy domains, whereas too low spending persists in others.We study a model in which delegates from jurisdictions bargain over local public goods provision.If all of the costs of public...

This paper analyses the outcome of non-cooperative national efforts in combatting global pollu-tion problems when governments are elected by their citizens. It is well-known that the latter tend to vote governments that are less 'green' than the median voter in order to commit to lower national...

This paper surveys the recent literature on the political economy of the formation of international environmental agreements. The survey covers theoretical modelling approaches and empirical studies including experimental work. Central to our survey is the question how the political process...

This paper shows that it is profitable for a firm to hire an overoptimistic manager to commit to a certain investment strategy in an R&D tournament situation. In the unique symmetric equilibrium, all firms delegate to overoptimistic managers, where the optimal degree of overoptimism depends on...

We present a non-technical account of ambiguity in strategic games and show how it may be applied to economics and social sciences. Optimistic and pessimistic responses to ambiguity are formally modelled. We show that pessimism has the effect of increasing (decreasing) equilibrium prices under...

Strategic delegation to an independent regulator with a pure consumer standard improves dynamic regulation by mitigating ratchet effects associated with short term contracting. A pure consumer standard alleviates the regulator’s myopic temptation to raise output after learning the firm is...

Against a background of rather mixed evidence about transfer pricing practices in multinational enterprises (MNEs) and varying attitudes on the part of tax authorities, this paper explores how multiple aims in transfer pricing can be pursued across four different transfer pricing regimes. A MNE...

We examine the strategic use of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in imperfectly competitive markets. The level of CSR determines the weight a firm puts on consumer surplus in its objective function before it decides upon supply. First, we consider symmetric Cournot competition and show that...