Once upon a time, economists saw capital account liberalization--the free and unrestricted flow of capital in and out of countries--as unambiguously good. Good for debtor states, good for the world economy. No longer. Spectacular banking and currency crises in recent decades have shattered the...

A ruler who does not identify with a social group, whether on religious, ethnic, cultural, or socioeconomic grounds, is confronted with a trade‐off between taking advantage of the out‐group population's eagerness to maintain its identity and inducing it to “comply” (conversion, quitting,...

We consider public-private partnerships, in which a public official selects a project that is then developed and operated by a private contractor. We derive optimal public accounting rules when the official's choice among projects is biased by ideology or social ties or because of pandering to...

Payment card associations offer both debit and credit cards and sometimes engage in a tie-in on the merchant side through the so-called honor-all-cards (HAC) rule. This article analyzes the impact of the HAC rule, using a simple model with two types of transactions subject to different...