The control of bribery is a policy objective in many developing countries. It has been argued that asymmetric punishments could reduce bribery by incentivizing whistle-blowing. This paper investigates the role played by asymmetric punishment in a setting where bribe size is determined by Nash...

This book considers how emerging economies around the world face the challenge of building good institutions and effective governance, since so much of economic development depends on having these in place. The promotion of shared prosperity and the battle against poverty require interventions...

The paper is about the art of exchange rate management by central banks. It begins by reviewing the diversity of objectives and practices of central bank intervention in the foreign exchange market. Central banks typically exercise discretion in determining when and to what extent to intervene....

As the Eurozone crisis drags on, it is evident that a part of the problem lies in the architecture of debt and its liabilities within the Eurozone and, more generally, the European Union. This paper argues that a large part of the problem can be mitigated by permitting appropriately-structured...

The geometry of the line and the circle has been used in economics for a long time to understand location choice and political positioning in democratic polity. This paper draws on some elementary ideas from geometry and game theory to extend some of the analysis to beyond lines and circles, to...

This paper, based on the introductory remarks made at the two-day conference on "The State of the Economy, the State of the World," is an idiosyncratic stocktaking of the trajectory of economics from Adam Smith to contemporary times, with special attention to the rise of development economics....

The paper provides a complete characterization of Nash equilibria for games in which n candidates choose a strategy in the form of a platform, each from a circle of feasible platforms, with the aim of maximizing the stretch of the circle from where the candidate's platform will receive support...

There is a growing appreciation in economics that people have emotional vulnerabilities, commitments to social norms, and systematic irrationalities, which impact their decision making and choice in the marketplace. The flip side of this is that human beings are susceptible to being manipulated...