We examine how socio-political conflict in Bolivia has affected its economic performance since the 1970s. Such conflict includes strikes, demonstrations, road blockades, and conventional rent-seeking. Since conflict has costs, it diverts resources away from production, tends to reduce investment...

Democracy usually is identified by the right to vote. However, in recent times voting procedures have been criticized, as they seemingly do not guarantee that all parts of the population have an adequate voice in the established political process. We suggest invigorating an old but nearly...

Indivisibilities are at the core of economic theory as rarely individuals can or want to limitlessly divide goods, inputs and activities, as well as related economic phenomena such as economies of scale, externalities and public goods. Indivisibilities help in explaining conflicts over social...

This paper studies how society votes on the payroll taxes of a basic income and a social health insurance scheme. Individuals differ along the two most important dimensions when it comes to the design of the two welfare schemes, namely, income and risk. Even though the introduction of a basic...

This paper proposes a normative theory of constitutional rules. We characterize the set of optimal constitutional rules under different assumptions about the degree of contractual imperfections. Our model explains why constitutions contain different types of rules. In particular, we derive...

I was born in Superior, Wisconsin on September 27, 1932 as the second child of Scott and Lucille Williamson. Both of my parents had been high school teachers but my father left teaching when he married my mother and joined my grandfather, Oliver E. Dunn, in the family real estate business. My...

I was born in Los Angeles, California, on August 7, 1933, and grew up during the Great Depression. Fortunately, our house had a large backyard that we filled with a vegetable garden and fruit trees. I learned how to grow vegetables and how to can apricots and peaches during the heat of summer....

Both a general description of the person and a special case of management of human activities have been developed. The information space for describing of a person’s behavior and activity is constructed. A classification for control objectives is constructed: a goal’s space for head is...

During the past few years arbitration has been under attack. Recent judicial decisions, newly enacted and proposed legislation, and populist sentiments are important and obviously can result in significant changes. But many of the criticisms leveled at arbitration can be addressed and, most...