What preferences will prevail in a society of rational individuals when preference evolution is driven by their success in terms of resulting payoffs? We show that when individuals’ preferences are their private information, a convex combinations of selfishness and morality stand out as...

In this paper, we analyze the equilibrium of a sequential game-theoretical model of lobbying, due to Groseclose and Snyder (1996), describing a legislature that vote over two alternatives, where two opposing lobbies compete by bidding for legislators?votes. In this model, the lobbyist moving...

We analyze and evaluate the di¤erent decision rules describing the Council of Ministers of the EU starting from 1958 up to now. Most of the existing studies use the Banzhaf index (for binary voting) or the Shapley-Shubik index (for distributive politics). We argue in favor of the nucleolus as a...

The recent subprime crisis and the ongoing Euro zone crisis have generated an enormous interest in the credit rating industry not only among economists but also among average citizens. As a consequence, we have seen an explosion of the economic literature on the industry. The objective of this...

We develop a model where a genetic test reveals whether an individual has a low or high probability of developing a disease. A costly prevention effort allows high-risk agents to decrease this probability. Agents are not obliged to take the test, but must disclose its results to insurers, and...

We develop a model where individuals all have the same probability of becoming dependent and vote over the social long term care insurance contribution rate before buying additional private insurance and saving. We study three types of behavioral biases, all having in common that agents...

The possibility of capturing and sequestering some fraction of the CO2 emissions arising from fossil fuel combustion, often labeled as carbon capture and storage (CCS), is drawing an increasing amount of attention in the business and academic communities. We present here a model of endogenous...

This paper examines issues related to the estimation of the government spending multiplier (GSM) in a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium context. We stress a potential source of bias in the GSM arising from the combination of Edgeworth complementarity/substitutability between private...

We look at the effects of physical activity (PA) recommendation policies by considering a social multiplier model in which individuals differ in their concern for PA. The government can either observe this concern (and implement the First Best) or not (and implement a uniform policy). Whichever...

Using an exhaustive database on academic publications in mathematics, we study the patterns of productivity by world mathematicians over the period 1984-2006. We uncover some surprising facts, such as the absence of age related decline in productivity and the relative symmetry of international...