We study the phenomenon of strategic polarization in group interactions. Agents with private preferences choose a public action (e.g., voice opinions), and the mean of their actions represents the group’s realized outcome. They face a trade-off between influencing the group outcome and...

This paper presents ‘crypto public choice’ which examines the economics of collective decision making in the functioning of blockchain protocols and among related communities of users. We introduce the blockchain community to public choice theory and show how it can be applied to the study...

The present paper analyzes the phenomenon of corruption in the context of a Public Works Department (PWD) in a developing country city and examines its tenacity in the face of anticorruption measures. Different behaviour patterns of the supervisor (official) of the PWD have been considered. The...

Bargaining over two issues as a bundle permits credible cheap talk about their relative importance even when interests are directly opposed on each issue. The resulting communication gains can exceed the gains from bundling previously identified in the monopoly pricing literature

This paper employs a multi-country delegation model of a single monetary policy and argues that a decision making mechanism based on the median voter theorem is too restrictive for capturing important aspects of monetary policy in the European Monetary Union, particularly because intensity of...

We investigate fairness preferences in matching mechanisms using a spectator design. Participants choose between the Boston mechanism or the serial dictatorship mechanism (SD) played by others. In our setup, the Boston mechanism generates justified envy, while the strategy-proof SD ensures...

We find that policy decisions made by elected politicians in Portuguese municipalities violate the predictions of standard microeconomic theory. Municipalities can choose a withholding rate between zero and five percent of the income tax revenue collected within their boundaries by the national...

This paper shows how white migration out of the postbellum South diffused and entrenched Confederate culture across the United States at a critical juncture of westward expansion and postwar reconciliation. These migrants laid the groundwork for Confederate symbols and racial norms to become...