[Joseph Stiglitz was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1993-95, and chairman of the CEA from 1995 through February 1997.] Today, I want to share with you some of my thoughts about the possibilities and limitations of government. These thoughts are focused around a simple...

In this study we analyze the effects of corruption on income inequality and poverty. Our analysis advances the existing literature in four ways. First, instead of using corruption indices assembled by various investment risk services, we use an objective measure of corruption: the number of...

In this paper, the first panel on sources of funding for Portuguese publicly owned museums is explored. There has been little work in this field worldwide, and none for Portugal. Evidence in this paper seems contrary to that relating to the UK and to the US. We find that incremental budgeting...

We study a model of local evolution. Players are located on a network and play games agains their neighbors. Players are characterized by three properties: (1) The stage game strategies they use agains their neighbors. (2) The repeated game strategy that determines the former. (3) A learning...

Essential characteristics of corruption are (1) a reciprocity relationship between briber and public official, (2) negative welfare effects, and (3) high penalties when discovered. We separate the influences of these factors in an experiment. In a two-player game reciprocation is economically...

In a bribery experiment, we test the hypothesis that distributive fairness considerations make relatively well-paid public officials less corruptible. Corrupt decisions impose damages to workers whose wage is varied in two treatments. However, there is no apparent difference in behaviour.

This paper deals with double lobbying: several bureaucrats participate in joint lobbying to get a high total departmental budget, but they also engage in antagonistic lobbying to reap as high a share of the total budget as possible. The antagonistic lobbying constitutes a contest among the...

We study the optimal allocation of screening tasks between two agents (incumbent vs. outsider or senior vs. junior) competing for one job. First, we characterize the inefficiencies from the principal's viewpoint of delegating the selection of the screening procedure to the incumbent. In general,...

Starting a firm with expansive potential is an option for educated and high-skilled workers. This option serves as an insurance against unemployment caused by labour market frictions and hence increases the incentives for education. We show within a matching model that reducing the start-up...