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...

In this paper I consider the desirability of drugs that enhance cognitive abilities in the context of tournaments that are used as optimal labor contracts as in Lazear and Rosen (1981). Such drugs reduce the number of voluntary participants in a tournament, but increase individual and total...

We use economic theory to examine the intensity of fundamentalist sects. Leaders work to enhance their followers’ observance level. We model three stylized situations under which fundamentalist groups function, examining the intensity of observance in each. We find that, under reasonable...

The individual voting behavior on the abolishment of single income-tax exemptions crucially depends on how strongly agents are affected by other deduction possibilities that are not at stake in the reform plans of the government. The interactions depend (i) on the shape of the tax schedule, and...