A primary means of bureaucratic oversight is consumer complaints. Yet, this important control mechanism has received very little attention in the literature on corruption. I study a model of corruption with incomplete information in which consumers require a government service from officials who...

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 world where the private protection of property is costly, government redistribution can lead to an increase in aggregate output. I find that while redistribution increases aggregate output, it may make some members of the society worse off. The State may directly enhance economic rights...

The quest for benefit from existing wealth or by seeking privileged benefit through influence over policy is known as rent seeking. Much rent seeking activity involves government and political decisions and is therefore in the domain of political economy, although it can also take place in...

The authors consider a two-period game of conflict between two factions, which have a desire for revenge. It is shown that, in contrast to conventional wisdom, the desire for revenge need not lead to escalation of the conflict. The subgame-perfect equilibrium is characterized by two effects: a...

The authors study the incentive effects of rematches in sports with an emphasis on professional boxing. If the difference between the boxers’ abilities is sufficiently small, the authors find that a clause that stipulates that the winner of the fight is obliged to give the loser a rematch...

I study a two-period model of conflict with two combatants and a third party who is an ally of one of the combatants. The third party is fully informed about the type of her ally but not about the type of her ally’s enemy. There is a signaling game between the third party and her ally’s...

I consider a model in which an asset owner must decide how much to invest in his asset mindful of the fact that an encroacher’s valuation of the asset is increasing in the asset owner’s investment. Due to incomplete property rights, the encroacher and asset owner engage in a contest over the...

The paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of a donors 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 transfers...

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...