Entrepreneurs starting new firms face two sorts of asymmetric information problems. Information about the quality of new investments may be private, leading to adverse selection in credit markets. And, entrepreneurs may not observe the quality of workers applying for jobs, resulting in adverse...

Politicians typically do not know what policies are best for achieving their broad objectives, so rely on bureaucrats for advice. Bureaucrats are better informed, so can manipulate outcomes by proposing policies that suit their interests. We capture this conflict of interests using a model of...

There has been a growing interest in relationship between economic development and fiscal decentralization. Empirical studies, however, are not conclusive regarding their correlation or causality. The present paper aims to provide a theoretical foundation for better understanding of this issue....

Market failure in the financing of risky projects is studied. Project risk includes idiosyncratic and aggregate components. Banks can investigate aggregate risk and can evaluate the idiosyncratic risk of each entrepreneur. They engage in Bertrand competition for entrepreneurs using interest...

This paper studies the conflict of interest between politicians and better-informed bureaucrats when they have differing preferences over a public project. We start with a baseline model where a bureaucrat advises a single decision maker (politician) whether to adopt a project. The bureaucrat...

Politicians typically do not know what policies are best for achieving their broad objectives, so rely on bureaucrats for advice. Bureaucrats are better informed, so can manipulate outcomes by proposing policies that suit their interests. We capture this conflict of interests using a model of...

Entrepreneurs starting new firms face two sorts of asymmetric information problems. Information about the quality of new investments may be private, leading to adverse selection in credit markets. And, entrepreneurs may not observe the quality of workers applying for jobs, resulting in adverse...

This paper investigates properties of the second best allocation in a fiscal federal system in which both federal tax and intergovernmental grants are involved and the taxation is distortionary. Also, optimal federal grants and tax policies in a decentralized fiscal system are examined. Our...

This paper studies the design of an optimal pension scheme in an OLG and open economy model. The pension scheme provides a flat rate benefit and is based on the PAYG principle. It thus combines inter- and intra-generational redistribution. In this setting a number of symmetric economies are...

We study the effectson tax enforcement and tax policy of unintentional complianceerrors by taxpayers and administrative errors by tax auditors.The government can impose both penalties for misreporting andrewards for honest reporting. Maximal sanctions will not be appliedbecause errors are...