Beside the traditional public-private dichotomy for the provision of public services, an increasing attention has been devoted to the use of public-private partnerships (PPPs). This paper compares relative inefficiencies of public provision, traditional private provision and PPPs. It also...

We analyze the voting behavior of a board of directors that has to approve (or reject) an investment proposal with uncertain return. We consider three types of directors: insiders, who are biased toward acceptance of the project, independent outsiders who want to maximize the firm's profit and...

We analyze the voting behavior of a small committee that has to approve or reject a proposal whose return is uncertain. Members have heterogenous preferences: some members want to maximize the expected value while other members have a bias toward project approval and ignore their private...

We analyze the voting behavior of a board of directors that has to approve (or reject) an investment proposal with uncertain return. We consider three types of directors: insiders, who are biased toward acceptance of the project, independent outsiders who want to maximize the firm’s profit and...

For almost two decades, starting from the early ‘90s, Italy experienced the strongest wave of decentralization reforms in its post II World War history. The causes were both economic and political. Yet, in recent years, again economic and political causes seem to call for opposite reforms....

For almost two decades, starting from the early ‘90s, Italy experienced the strongest wave of decentralization reforms in its post II World War history. The causes were both economic and political. Yet, in recent years, again economic and political causes seem to call for opposite reforms....

We develop a model of simultaneous and sequential voting in a committee where members do not share their private information and do not have the same preferences. When objective functions differ, an optimal order in the sequential game can be found, leading to a unique socially optimal...

For almost two decades, starting from the early ‘90s, Italy experienced the strongest wave of decentralization reforms in its post II World War history. The causes were both economic and political. Yet, in recent years, again economic and political causes seem to call for opposite reforms....

For almost two decades, starting from the early ‘90s, Italy experienced the strongest wave of decentralization reforms in its post II World War history. The causes were both economic and political. Yet, in recent years, again economic and political causes seem to call for opposite reforms....

In many countries, important features of municipal government (such as the electoral system, mayors' salaries, and the number of councillors) depend on whether the municipality is above or below arbitrary population thresholds. Several papers have used a regression discontinuity design (RDD) to...