In our theoretical model, we show that as per capita income decreases and the level of inequality increases, different segments of society are less likely to agree on the distribution of the burden of the necessary collective action, causing the relatively-wealthy simply to self-insure against...

In 1991, the World Health Assembly approved a set of Guiding Principles which emphasize voluntary donation, non-commercialization and a preference for cadavers over living donors” (World Health Organization). We investigate whether factors such as inequality, rule of law and religion have any...

Growth volatility is a major factor that retards growth. Recent studies that link democracy and volatility can not account for a link between democracy and investment volatility. Here, instead, we focus on a specific channel that links individualistism and low volatility. Unlike an...

Recently, police departments, legislators, media, and the public at large in the U.S. have increasingly been concerned about racial disparities in officers' issuing traffic tickets. Ascertaining the extent to which an observed disparity reflects racial bias is the crucial issue. First, we use a...

The prominent Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI), yields a higher concentration level in response to any merger between firms, implying that any merger will decrease the social welfare. Although HHI is used by the Anti-trust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (AD-DoJ), its merger...

“In 1991, the World Health Assembly approved a set of Guiding Principles which emphasize voluntary donation, non-commercialization and a preference for cadavers over living donors” (World Health Organization). We investigate whether factors such as inequality, rule of law and religion have...

Given a finite set of alternatives, players alternate making offers. Player one offers some alternative that player two can accept or veto. If player two accepts, it is enforced and the game ends. Otherwise, player two makes a counteroffer among the remaining alternatives and so on. If all...

Responsible for 20 million severe injuries and/or deaths annually, few epidemics receive less attention than traffic accidents. Going beyond confirming an inverted U-shaped relationship between mean income and fatalities, we show theoretically that income inequality can positively affect...

A country’s levels of collective action in the provision of socially desirable goods and services are primarily determined by its level of development, important natural attributes, and its unique institutional characteristics. In general, one can expect that, given a particular set of natural...

Law enforcement officers are allowed to exercise a significant amount of street-level discretion in a variety of ways. In this paper, we focus on a particular prominent kind of discretionary behavior by traffic officers when issuing speeding tickets, speed discounting. Officers partially forgive...