This paper investigates whether the rare occurrence of a local election ending in a tie or being decided by a single vote generates informational spill-overs on nearby localities' subsequent elections. First, based on the pivotal-voter theory, we develop a model of costly instrumental voting in...

To investigate players' incentives in coalition formation, we consider a legislative bargaining game with asymmetric information about time preferences. The force that does not exist in usual bargaining games with unanimity is that due to majority rule, if a player signals himself as the patient...

This paper considers a two-stage sequential investment problem where the principal wishes to cancel the project if it fails in the first stage. Suppose that only the first-stage agent can observe the outcome in the first stage. There are two organizational forms to choose from: integration,...

This paper considers a two-stage sequential investment problem where the principal wishes to cancel the project if it fails in the first stage. Suppose that only the first-stage agent can observe the outcome in the first stage. There are two organizational forms to choose from: integration,...

This paper invesigates the optimal compensation scheme for workers in a team who value not only absolute but also relative incomes. A worker is said to be more ambitious if his utility places more weight on relative income. In this case the firm can exploit the worker's preference for relative...