Promise competition is prevalent in many economic environments, but promise keeping is often difficult to observe. We study the value of transparency for promise competition and ask whether promises still offer an opportunity to honor future obligations when outcomes do not allow for observing...

Promise competition is prevalent in many economic environments, but promise keeping is often difficult to observe. We study the value of transparency for promise competition and ask whether promises still offer an opportunity to honor future obligations when outcomes do not allow for observing...

I consider a society with heterogeneous individuals who can form organizations for the production of a differentiated service. An arrangement of organizations is said to be split up stable when there is no majority to split any of the organizations. Unlike other equilibrium concepts in the...

This paper develops a political-economy model of the budget process focusing on the common pool problem of the public budget. We show that the externality arising from the fact that public spending tends to be targeted at individual groups in society while the tax burden is widely dispersed...

Hierarchies are pervasive in political settings. From judges to elected politicians, from activists to bureaucrats, political agents compete to be promoted to higher positions. This paper studies political tournaments and their impact on key aspects of political performance: accountability and...

Regulatory reforms across European countries have attempted to increase consumer welfare by introducing competition and choice into public service markets. But it has been questioned whether reforms have benefited all people equally, suggesting that vulnerable groups of service users are...

Legislative misbehavior is best curbed through rational legislating requirements, whereby legislators must include in the legislative record an explicit elaboration of the path of lawmaking - from evidence, through findings, to ultimate conclusions - that clearly sets out the analytic connection...