Concern over online information privacy is widespread and rising. However, prior research is silent about the value of information privacy in the presence of potential benefits from sharing personally identifiable information. We analyzed individuals' trade-offs between the benefits and costs of...

This paper develops a model of pricing and advertising in a matching environment with capacity constrained sellers. Sellers' expenditure on directly informative advertising attracts consumers only probabilistically. Consumers who happen to observe advertisements randomize over the advertised...

This paper examines the political economy of redistribution when voters have asymmetric information about the redistributive preferences of politicians and the latter cannot make credible policy commitments. The candidates in each party are endogenously selected by a process of Nash Bargaining...

I study the consequences of heterogeneity of skills for the design of an optimal unemployment insurance, using a principal-agent set-up with a risk neutral insurer and infinitely lived risk averse agents. Agents, who are characterised by different productivities or skills, are employed by firms...

This paper assesses the development of the modeling of group behavior in the interest group literature. Throughout the literature, interest groups have been modeled in multiple ways: from passive groups that do not interact with one another to groups that act just as rational strategic players....

If distortions in the labour market lead to inefficiently high unemployment, and policy makers cannot enter into a binding policy commitment before nominal wages are set, excessive inflation may result due to a credibility problem. This is the famous Kydland&Prescott- Barro&Gordon inflationary...

Electoral constituencies recognize favorable policy outcomes in high- turnout jurisdictions (Key 1984 [1949]; Hamilton 1993; Fleck 1999). In the present paper, I evaluate whether underlying institutions might provide a finer explanation of this relationship. To do so, I formally examine variation in...

This paper offers an explanation for why policy makers stick to inefficient policy decisions. I argue that repealing a policy is a bad signal to voters about the policy maker's competence if voters do not have complete knowledge about the effects of implemented policies. I derive the optimal...

Conviction rates in Japan exceed 99 percent -- why? On the one hand, because Japanese prosecutors are badly understaffed they may prosecute only their strongest cases and present judges only with the most obviously guilty defendants. On the other, because Japanese judges can be reassigned by the...