While many theories of the firm seek to explain when firms make rather than buy, in practice firms often make and buy the same input- they engage in plural sourcing. We argue that explaining the mix of external procurement and internal sourcing for the same input requires a consideration of...

We present a model of political campaigning where a candidate chooses between promoting oneself (positive campaign) or attacking the rival (negative campaign). The media validates the claims made by candidates, and the quality of a candidate is not fully revealed unless there is a debate about...

We report on an experiment comparing compulsory and voluntary voting institutions in a voting game with common preferences. Rational choice theory predicts sharp differences in voter behavior between these two institutions. If voting is compulsory, then voters may find it rational to vote...

I examine the choice of political rhetoric when one candidate's willingness to misinform the voter is checked by the other's ability to inform. In the basic model, a debate is a competition between two candidates in which the "good" candidate wants to reveal information about quality and the...

In developing countries with weak enforcement institutions, there is implicitly a large reliance on electoral incentives to reduce corruption. In this paper we study the effect of electoral competition on corruption when uncertainty in elections is high, as in many developing countries. Our...