Suppose an altruistic person, A, is willing to transfer resources to a second person, B, if B comes upon hard times. If B anticipates that A will act in this manner, B will save too little from both agents' point of view. This is the Samaritan's dilemma. The logic of the dilemma has been...

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...

This paper examines the mechanics of intertemporal information provision in {\em dynastic governments}. It has been suggested that ``horizontal accountability," i.e., a system of governance where auditing functions lie outside the executive branch, can ensure credible disclosure of information....

Professional experts offer advice with the objective of appearing well informed. Their ability is evaluated on the basis of the advice given and the realized state of the world. We model this situation as a reputational cheap-talk game with continuous signal, state, and ability type spaces....

Which issues are discussed by candidates in an election campaign? Why are some issues never discussed? Model tractability is lost quickly when dealing with these questions, partly because of the multidimensional voting inherent in models of multiple issues. Our model features two candidates for...

A decision maker is contemplating an action whose outcome is state dependent. She has a ‘prior’ over the states of the world and before choosing an action, she can consult an ‘expert’. We model the communication game between the decision maker and the expert as a ‘cheap-talk’ game....

The consequences of many policies are complicated and difficult to foresee. Those who are capable of providing information to policy makers often have a vested interest in the outcomes. This gives them an incentive to distort information to manipulate policy decisions. In this article we argue...

I derive an explicit solution for the saddle path in a Ramsey growth model. The existence of a closed form expression greatly simplifies the analysis of how the parameters of the utility function affects investments and growth.

This chapter analyzes the effects of an aging population on individual skill choices and the production structure by means of a dynamic general equilibrium model with overlapping generations and probabilistic aging. The model allows for capital-skill complementarity, which strongly affects the...