Motivated by a novel stylized fact -- countries with isolated capital cities display worse quality of governance -- we provide a framework of endogenous institutional choice based on the idea that elites are constrained by the threat of rebellion, and that this threat is rendered less effective...

China’s economic reforms have resulted in spectacular growth and poverty reduction. However, China’s institutions look ill-suited to achieve such a result, and they indeed suffer from serious shortcomings. To solve "China puzzle" this paper analyses China’s institution - a regionally...

We study how norms can solve distributional conflict inside a clan and the efficient coordination of collective action in a conflict with an external enemy. We characterize a fully non-cooperative equilibrium in a finite game in which a self-enforcing norm coordinates the members on efficient...

Do foreign educated individuals play a role in promoting democracy in their home country? Despite the large amount of private and public resources spent on foreign education, there is no systematic evidence that foreign educated individuals foster democracy in their home countries. Using a...

It is well known that ex post efficient mechanisms for the provision of indivisible public goods are not interim individually rational. However, the corresponding literature assumes that agents who veto a mechanism can enforce a situation in which the public good is never provided. This paper...

We consider a financing game with costly enforcement based on Townsend (1979), but where monitoring is non-contractible and allowed to be stochastic. Debt is the optimal contract. Moreover, the debt contract induces creditor leniency and strategic defaults by the borrower on the equilibrium...

We model the emergence of formal insurance institutions as equilibria under limited contract enforceability where groups are required to be coalition-proof but also can use fines for enforcement. The model can generate coexistence of formal and informal groups without requiring heterogeneity in...

This paper analyzes two-stage rank-order tournaments. A principal decides (i) how to spread prize money across the two periods, (ii) how to weigh performance in the two periods when awarding the second period prize, and (iii) whether to reveal performance after the first period. The information...

We experimentally investigate information aggregation through majority voting when some voters are biased. In such situations, majority voting can have a “dark side”, i.e. result in groups making choices inferior to those made by individuals acting alone. We develop a model to predict how...

We propose a theory by which geographic variations in the transparency of the production process explain cross-regional differences in the scale of the state, in its hierarchical structure, and in property rights over land. The key linkage between geography and these institutions, we posit, is...