This dissertation consists of three essays. In the first, we address the coordination problem that individuals face when deciding whether to pay a membership fee and join an association that provides a pure public good as well as selective benefits to its members, when the ability of the...

We consider a preemption game between competing groups; firms lobbying individually for their groups' interests provide an empirical example. Among symmetric groups, the first firm to take action bears an (unobserved) cost and wins the prize on behalf of its group. In equilibrium, the firm with...