Few aspects of economic policy elicit more conflicting opinions than the role of bureaucracy in policy making and implementation. These range from Max Weber’s picture of a rule-governed efficient institution to the ‘Yes, Minister’ caricature of one bound in complex red tape,...

This paper considers the possibility of collective action by the business community to counter corruption in the award of government licenses and contracts. The analogy is with contract enforcement institutions studied by economic historians and contract law scholars. The institution in this...

The paper begins with a brief overview of the theory of incentives, with special attention to issues that are important in the public sector, in general and human capital in particular. It then reviews some case studies and empirical studies of incentives in the public sector, examining how...

Three game theoretic issues of international trade and commercial policy are examined fro m the special perspective of small countries. In oligopolistic market s, the question is when their ability to remain credibly small player s can be an advantage. In negotiations about trade regimes, small...

Many recent stochastic dynamic models in economics and finance are based on the theory of Brownian motion and its control or regulation. A heuristic exposition of this theory is presented with emphasis given to Itô's Lemma, the calculation of expected values and the derivation of Smooth Pasting...

Decisions made under ongoing uncertainty and costly reversibility entail a range of the state variable where inaction is optimal, which in turn produces hysteresis--permanent effects of temporary shifts. The range is usually defined by nonlinear equations that need numerical solutions. In this...

Consider a world of traders separated in geographic, economic, or social space. Honest trade offers larger gains for more distant traders, but frequencies of meetings, and information flows about cheating, have local bias. Honesty is self-enforcing only between pairs of sufficiently close...