Doping, or the use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs, is an epidemic problem in sports ranging from the Olympics to high school athletics. Sports organizations have been trying numerous approaches to discouraging these activities. This paper presents a theoretical model of doping in a...

Institutional economics is one of the most developing fields of economics. However, many its issues still need to be solved. For instance the theory does not give exact answer to why particular institutions (formal and informal norms) occur, change and cease to exist. The paper tries to solve...

A distinctive feature of recent revolutions was the key role of social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube). In a simple model we assume that while social media allow to observe all previous decisions, mass media only give aggregate information about the state of a revolt. We show, first,...

This paper provides a cradle-to-grave model for political union between two unequally endowed states. We introduce negotiated, contested, and time-consistent contested constitutions to address various classes of merger problems. Merger agreement is shown to be path dependent and, in some cases,...

A blockchain is an institutional technology—a protocol—that allows for economic coordination between agents separated by boundaries of possible mistrust. Blockchains are not the only technology in history to have these characteristics. The paper looks at the role of the diplomatic protocol...

Property rights are undoubtedly among the most important institutions for economic efficiency. Still, by looking at reality we usually see property rights only imperfectly enforced. In this paper we identify uncertainty faced by an enforcer to be sufficient to explain this observation. This...

A distinctive feature of recent revolutions was the key role of social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube). In this paper, we study its role in mobilization. We assume that social media allow potential participants to observe the individual participation decisions of others, while...

Borrowing from public choice literature, while aristocratic civil wars can be regarded as anarchy, and the monopoly of violence by the state as Leviathan, duel of honor is an orderly anarchy. The sudden or gradual withering of duel of honor as an institution marks the transition to the monopoly...

We build a model for predicting civil wars where the government bargains with a rebel group using concessions and repression. The equilibrium is either a state of perpetual peace where there are concessions but no repression, or a state of repressive equilibrium that can lead to civil wars. At...

We explore how public opinion polls affect candidates' campaign spending in political competition. Generally, polls lead to asymmetric behavior. Under a majority rule there always exists an equilibrium in which the initially more popular candidate invests more in the campaign and thereby...