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Politicians, Governed vs. Non-Governed Interest Groups and Rent Dissipation

Epstein, Gil S.; Mealem, Yosef - Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) - 2013

Government intervention often gives rise to contests and the government can influence their outcome by choosing their type. We consider a contest with two interest groups: one that is governed by a central planner and one that is not. Rent dissipation is compared under two well-known contest...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011212757

Symmetric and Asymmetric Committees

Ben-Yashar, Ruth; Danziger, Leif - Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) - 2011

This paper studies the assignment of decision makers to two committees that make decisions by a simple majority rule. There is an even number of decision makers at each of various skill levels and each committee has an odd number of members. Surprisingly, even with the symmetric assumptions in...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009147495

Lotteries vs. All-Pay Auctions in Fair and Biased Contests

Epstein, Gil S.; Mealem, Yosef; Nitzan, Shmuel - Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) - 2012

The form of contests for a single fixed prize can be determined by a designer who maximizes the contestants' efforts. This paper establishes that, under common knowledge of the two asymmetric contestants' prize valuations, a fair Tullock-type endogenously determined lottery is always superior to...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011271979

When Is Voting Optimal?

Ben-Yashar, Ruth; Danziger, Leif - Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) - 2014

We consider a framework where the optimal decision rule determining the collective choice depends in a simple way on the decision makers' posterior probabilities of a particular state of nature. Nevertheless, voting is generally an inefficient way to make collective choices and this paper sheds...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011105993

Candidate Quality

Poutvaara, Panu; Takalo, Tuomas - Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) - 2004

differences, informative campaigning and political parties. Our results suggest that primaries, campaign costs and rewards have … the average candidate quality when the campaigning costs are sufficiently high. …

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005822454

The Efficacy and Efforts of Interest Groups in Post Elections Policy Formation

Epstein, Gil S.; Mealem, Yosef; Nitzan, Shmuel - Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) - 2012

This paper presents a new model of interest groups and policy formation in the legislature. In our setting, the already given party ideological predispositions and power distribution determine the expected policy outcome. Our analysis applies to the case of un-enforced or enforced party...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011271983

Give and You Shall Receive: The Emergence of Welfare-Reducing Reciprocity

Murray, Cameron K.; Frijters, Paul; Vorster, Melissa - Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) - 2015

We develop a new experiment to study the emergence of welfare-reducing bilateral alliances within larger groups, and the effectiveness of institutional interventions to curtail this reciprocal alliance behaviour. In each of the 25 rounds of our experiments, a player (the 'allocator') nominates...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011268879

Uncertainty and the Politics of Employment Protection

Vindigni, Andrea - Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) - 2008

on the power of labor to extract rents and on the status quo level of firing costs. In particular, we show that when … firing costs are relatively low to begin with, a transition to a rigid labor market is favored by all and only the employed … of relatively large rents. Moreover, we demonstrate that when the status quo level of firing costs is relatively high …

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005763652

Who Is the Enemy?

Epstein, Gil S.; Gang, Ira N. - Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) - 2004

We examine who benefits when there is a strong leader in place, and those who benefit when a situation lacks a proper leader. There are fractious terrorist groups who seek to serve the same people in common cause against a common enemy. The groups compete for rents obtained from the public by...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005703639

The Economics of Altruistic Punishment and the Demise of Cooperation

Egas, Martijn; Riedl, Arno - Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) - 2005

Explaining the evolution and maintenance of cooperation among unrelated individuals is one of the fundamental problems in biology and the social sciences. Recent experimental evidence suggests that altruistic punishment is an important mechanism to maintain cooperation among humans. In this...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005822636