By applying the Revelation Principle, we focus on how a sponsor, who possesses political authority, could minimise the efficiency losses when bureaucrats are experts - that is, when they control information about the true costs of public services production. Our results come in striking contrast...

In a class of informed principal problems with common values, we define iteratively a particular allocation which we call the assured allocation. It is comparatively easy to calculate and straightforward to interpret. It always exists, is unique and continuous in the priors. It is undominated,...

Consider an agent who has an expertise in producing a non-marketable good. This good is valued by a single principal, and there is a verifiable measure of the agent's performance. Crucially, the agent is intrinsically motivated due to 'warm glow altruism'. In addition, the agent's budget, which...

We investigate private provision of discrete public goods under refund and cost-sharing. If it is commonly believed that individuals may be warm-glow altruists and the group-size is a Poisson random variable, then the equilibrium distribution of collected contributions is uniquely determined. If...

We contribute to the debate over the effectiveness of elections in motivating incumbents to perform well. We show that with endogenous political competition the effectiveness of democracy in disciplining officials can be largely diminished.