Civil wars and conflict can be understood from an economic point of view only if there is incomplete contracting. I examine such settings and first discuss sources of incomplete contracting, from geography and ethnic and social distance to external interventions due to geopolitics or the...

This paper employs a structural model to estimate whether global output gap has become an important determinant of U.S. inflation dynamics. The results provide support for the relevance of global slack as a determinant of U.S. inflation after 1985. The role of domestic output gap, instead, seems...

We consider a congestible road, where the cost of travel increases with the number of users on the road and decreases with capacity. Those persons who do not use the road favor a toll which would maximize revenue, and they oppose spending on road capacity. Users of the road prefer a low toll and...

Two districts with divergent productivity levels engage in policy-making on the provision of local public goods that enhance future income and hence create a dynamic linkage across periods. The policy choices of district representatives are derived under alternative fiscal systems, and the...

Empirical work on bank loans typically regresses loan spreads (markups of loan interest rates over a benchmark rate) on observed characteristics of banks, firms, and loans. The estimation is problematic when some of these characteristics are only partially observed and the matching of banks and...

This paper explores the impact of airport noise regulation on airline service quality and airfares. It also characterizes the socially optimal stringency of noise limits, taking both noise damage and the various costs borne by airlines and their passengers into account. The analysis also...

A policy is often more effective the more confident are economic agents that the current leader (or principal) will adopt the policy. This paper considers uncertainty about the principal's type, interpreted as uncertainty about the probability that he would adopt a project or policy. We show how...

A government which raises taxes in the current period may induce workers to invest in finding ways to reduce their tax payments, and so may reduce the government's ability to raise revenue in the future. Therefore, a government that fears it may have to raise much revenue in the future may set...

This paper presents a simple model of airline schedule competition that circumvents the complexities of the spatial approach used in earlier papers. Consumers choose between two duopoly carriers, each of which has evenly spaced flights, by comparing the combinations of fare and expected schedule...

Earmarking is a form of bundling in which government adopts a tax policy while specifying the uses of the revenue. This paper explores how bundling can enhance efficiency: it can inform the public of the quality of a program proposed, or of the quality of the agency that will be responsible for...