This paper is concerned with the effects of regulations that prohibit the use of information to risk-rate premiums in a life insurance market. In particular, new information derived from genetic tests is likely to become very relevant in the near to medium term future. Many governments have...

What is the role of legal limits on executive power, if any, when citizens demand more security from terrorism and allowing executive officials legal flexibility of action appears necessary to achieve it? We develop a game-theoretic model to show that when the executive faces increased electoral...

We analyze a theoretical model in which entrepreneurs’ property rights are threatened by “raiders” who can challenge them to a contest for control of their firms. Entrepreneurs have heterogeneous productivity, and decide how much capital to invest before raiders decide whom to attack. In...

We analyze the optimal timing problem of an agenda setter who can propose a project that is then voted on by a committee. The payoff consists of a common stochastic component and an idiosyncratic component that differs among committee members. The agenda setter may be biased for or against the...

How should we evaluate the welfare implications of improvements to safety technologies in the presence of offsetting behavior? We model this problem as a symmetric game in which each player's payoff depends on his own action and the average action of the other players, and analyze under which...

This paper develops a theory of political behavior in which moral values are a luxury good: the relative weight that voters place on moral rather than material considerations increases in income. This idea both generates new testable implications and ties together a broad set of empirical...

This paper analyzes the effects of additional information in a life insurance market under adverse selection. It is shown that individuals have an incentive to acquire information about their risk type if their informational status cannot be observed by insurers. In aggregate, the existence of a...

Gerrymandering undermines representative democracy by creating many uncompetitive legislative districts, and generating the very real possibility that a party that wins a clear majority of the popular vote does not win a majority of districts. We present a new approach to the determination of...

How does electoral accountability affect the effectiveness of terrorism prevention in a democracy? We analyze the connection between electoral accountability and policy effectiveness in the context of terrorism prevention. We develop a formal model of an interaction between a government, a...