Power indices are mappings that quantify the influence of the members of a voting body on collective decisions a priori. Their nonlinearity and discontinuity makes it difficult to compute inverse images, i.e., to determine a voting system which induces a power distribution as close as possible...

The paper focuses on the working of incentives both in parametric and strategic situations. It challenges some of the basic assumptions of the traditional model of economic agent which is usually assumed as self-interested and consequentialist. Psychological researches have stressed the...

In the past ten years, the boundaries between public and open science and commercial research efforts have become more porous. Scholars have thus more critically examined ways in which these two institutional regimes intersect. Large open source software projects have also attracted commercial...

The transplantation of public policies is a powerful tool in the hands of economic development. Powerful as it may be, transplantation verbatim et litteratim is not inevitably successful, thus not always desirable. There are good economic reasons to consider the practice of grafting in public...

This paper surveys alternative approaches to the emergence and evolution of institutions. The challenge is to develop frameworks capable of capturing both stability and change. We follow a “descaling” approach to show how founding assumptions about economics—namely, alternative assumptions...

The recent economic crisis has led to calls for a comprehensive restructuring of energy, financial, health care, and educational systems. Critics worry the restructuring of these complex institutional arrangements could produce adverse unintended consequences. Given these concerns, pre-testing...