In the very popular FOX TV reality show, American Idol, the judges, who are presumably experts in evaluating singing effort, have no voting power when the field is narrowed to the top twenty-four contestants. It is only the votes of viewers that count. In the 2007 season of the show, Simon...

In a world where the private protection of property is costly, government redistribution can lead to an increase in aggregate output. This result is not new. The novelty of this paper lies in specifying the conditions under which this efficiency-enhancing redistribution improves everyone’s...

In a model with social influence, Becker (1991) offers an explanation for why popular restaurants with excess demand do not raise their prices. He also offers an explanation for why such restaurants do not increase supply but admits his explanation may be weak. Becker does not provide a formal...

The paper examines a model in which the number of immigrants allowed into a country is the outcome of a costly political lobbying process between a firm and a union. The union and the firm bargain over the wage of natives after the number of immigrants that will be permitted is known. I consider...

I consider a two-stage elimination contest with uninformed and informed players. Informed players can signal their type to future uninformed opponents through their efforts in the first stage. Relative to the benchmark case of complete information, I find that an informed player exerts a higher...

I show that in an infinitely repeated contest, collusion is easier to sustain when the players are more equal than when they are less equal. Therefore, aggregate rent-seeking expenditures may be lower when the contestants are more equally matched. This is in sharp contrast to the standard result...

We consider a differential game of a conflict between two factions who both have a desire to exact revenge. We show that, in contrast to conventional wisdom, the desire for revenge need not lead to escalation of conflicts. Surprisingly, in the open-loop equilibrium, the weaker faction exerts a...

We model an infinitely-repeated conflict between two factions who both have a desire to exact revenge for past destruction suffered. The destruction suffered by a player is a stock that grows according to his opponent’s destructive efforts and the rate at which past destruction is forgotten...

The paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of a donor’s choice of the composition of unrestricted and in-kind/restricted transfers to a recipient and how this composition is adjusted in response to changes in the moral hazard behavior of the recipient. In-kind or restricted...

History is replete with overt discrimination on the basis of race, gender, age, citizenship, ethnicity, marital status, academic performance, health status, volume of market transactions, religion, sexual orientation, etc. However, these forms of discrimination are not equally tolerable. For...