"We show that status quo bias combined with downward-sloping demand implies addictive behavior. This result does not depend on transitivity, a complete ordering, or even the existence of a preference relation that rationalizes choices." ("JEL" D11, D81) Copyright (c) 2007 Western Economic...

Voters value valence characteristics such as honesty and competence. In this paper, we consider the situation where candidates may have more than one valence characteristic of importance to the voters. At the same time we introduce a new concept “the median-crossing property" which differs...

By applying the standard tools of microeconomic analysis, the author argues that democratic markets work as well as economic markets. In particular, he shows that previous work has greatly exaggerated the existence of principal-agent and informational problems in electoral markets and has drawn...

We provide a characterization of participants' behavior in a contest or tournament where the marginal productivity of effort varies across contestants and individual productivity is private information. We then consider the optimal design of such a contest. <p>We first analyze contestant behavior...</p>

This article provides a general theory explaining the geographic and population size and wealth of nations. Successful countries create conditions for high productivity in the economic sphere by enforcing property rights and providing social overhead capital and at the same time minimize...

This article discusses the necessary conditions for two countries at war to come to a settlement and explores how domestic and military costs, time preferences and attitudes toward risk affect the timing and the outcome of the peace. It views the termination of war as a process of rational...

The standard evolutionary explanation for depression is that being emotionally depressed is adaptive. We argue that being depressed is not adaptive (indeed, quite the opposite), but that the threat of depression for bad outcomes and the promise of pleasure for good outcomes are adaptive because...