We explore how the structure of incentives contracts adjusts to the creation of quasi-rents by the delivery of certain types of contract obligations under weak third party enforcement (TPE). The situation invites quasi-rent appropriation by some contractor. We focus on possible ex-post...

Following an earlier paper titled 'Population and Poverty: The Real Score' (UPSE Discussion Paper 0415, December 2004), the present paper was first issued in August 2008 as a contribution to the public debate on the population issue that never seemed to die in this country. The debate heated up...

The National Broadband Network (NBN) project and the Cyber Education Project (CEP) are state-initiated programs originally conceived to provide last-mile connectivity and interoperability to all government offices and all public schools, respectively. The backbone service required for this was...

Debates on the revision of the value-added tax (VAT) are about to reach the penultimate stage. Once house and senate have passed their respective versions of the bill, congress - through a bicameral conference committee sometimes referred to as the 'third chamber' - must then agree on the final...

We propose an equilibrium concept, the Robust Nash equilibrium (RNE), that combines the best-reply rationality and the first mover invariance condition. The single-stage 2x2 symmetric information game G is transformed into sequential two-stage games with two sub-trees: STA has the row player...

Documentary evidence of the emergence and the eventual complete dominance of the Chinese mercantile traders (Sangleys) during the Spanish colonial period in the Philippines is first presented. We identify the critical traits in the Sangley mercantile genome and the new contractual and...

We give the conditions for the attainment of self-enforcing Pareto efficiency under complete effort non-observability, strict agent rationality and global budget balance among teams involved in a winner-takes-all contest for a prize. Employing Nash conjectures and fixed fee financing of the...

We fuse a social dilemma game and a game pitting the group against nature, where the group's probability of avoiding disaster depends on the resources it raises from members. The result is the Nederlander-Prisoner's Dilemma Game where the cost of failure is equally shared. We introduce the...

Many supply contracts between the state and private agents in a developing country are cost-re-imbursement variety and are rolled out under weak and unreliable governance. The latter has to be provided for through higher supply cost. The state in turn can lower the contract cost by providing...

This paper revisits the record of CARP over the quarter century of its existence. By 2014, 5.05 million of the 5.37m hectares of the targeted agricultural land shall have been distributed. As a program for land asset equity, it shall have accomplished 99% of its target, whopper of a success for...