We analyze the relative importance of party ideology and rents from office in the formation of coalitions in a parliamentary democracy. In equilibrium, the types of coalitions that are formed may be minimal winning, minority or surplus and they may be ideologically `disconnected'. The coalitions...

We study a game theoretic model of a parliamentary democracy under proportional representation where `citizen candidates' form parties, voting occurs and governments are formed. We study the coalition governments that emerge as functions of the parties' seat shares, the size of the rents from...

We analyze an agency model of political competition to examine whether conflict encourages hawkish behavior, and if such behavior can itself aggravate conflict. We consider situations of conflict between a state and an insurgent group, such as conflict over a piece of land. Negotiations are...

We analyze the impact of prosecutor elections on case backlogs. Previous evidence has shown that re-election pressures result in more cases going to trial. Since trials require time and resources, one can expect an effect on the queue. Two competing theories are developed: one of signalling...

NREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) is the Indian government's flagship anti-poverty program and is one of the largest public works programmes in the world which aims to increase employment opportunities for the poor and in particular, improve women's access to the...

We analyze how product quality, prices and demand interact in a dynamic model of asymmetric information. We show that in markets for experience goods, even in the absence of certification, trade may occur, arising from a relation between market thickness and the incentive of sellers to produce...

We provide the first detailed econometric analysis of the impact of sentencing on various types of acquisitive crime (theft, burglary, fraud and robbery) in England and Wales. We examine (a) whether sentencing reduces crime and (b) whether short sentences are more effective than long sentences....

We analyze the Hotelling-Downs model of a winner-take-all elections with sequential entry where n 2 'office-seeking' candidates with privately known qualities arrive in an order to announce platform commitments and voters receive partially informative exogenous signals about quality of each...

A new explanation for the failure of plea bargaining is provided. It is shown that a retention agent (i.e. median voter) can use convictions at trial as a signal of the quality of a prosecutor. This encourages a public prosecutor to take cases to trial even when both social welfare and her...