The main objectives of regulatory reform and privatization of infrastructure in Brazil were to attract new private investment, increase efficiency and reduce the public debt through the use of privatization revenues. Whereas the evidence suggests that regulatory reform (privatization included)...

This paper develops a principal-agent model to explore the interaction of corruption, bribery, and political oversight of production. Under full information, an honest politician achieves the first best while a dishonest politician creates shortages and bribes. Under asymmetric information, an...

We study optimal policies composed of pollution standards, probabilities of inspection and fines dependant on the degree of noncompliance with the standards, in a context where regulated firms own private information. In contrast with previous literature, we show that optimal policies, being...

When is it better for the government to provide information, and when is this role better left to the market? I present a simple framework for evaluating this question, where the key factors are the cost of errors based on imperfect information and whether information is eventually revealed to...