What is the efficiency cost of rent-seeking activities in Argentina? This paper quantitatively shows that rent-seeking activities in the form of bribes have aggregate effects through two channels. First, they generate misallocation of resources across firms because they prevent resources from...

We survey the economics of transboundary river water allocation, which emerged in the 1960s and has matured over the last decade due to increasing concerns over water scarcity and pollution. We outline the major approaches and pay specific attention to the strategic aspects of transboundary...

We review the theory of fairness as it pertains to concretely specified problems of resource allocations. We present punctual notions designed to evaluate how well individuals, or groups, are treated in relation to one another: no-envy, egalitarian-equivalence, individual and collective lower or...

We propose the minimum approval mechanism (MAM) for a standard linear public good environment with two players. Players simultaneously and privately choose their contributions to the public good in the first stage. In the second stage, they simultaneously decide whether to approve the other’s...

We look for necessary properties of shareholder-value maximizing corporate boards when shareholders face a trade-off between improving information sharing between the board and management and reducing distortions in decision-making arising out of managerial agency. We draw a distinction between...

We analyze the determinants of tacit collusion in an infinitely repeated contest with noise in the contest success function. Sustaining collusion via Nash reversion strategies is easier the more noise there is, and is more difficult the larger is the contest's prize value. An increase in the...

We characterize optimal corporate boards when shareholders face a trade-off between improving information sharing between the board and management and reducing distortions in decision making arising out of managerial agency. We show that allocating authority to management is suboptimal....

In this paper we provide a political game where agents decide whether to become legislators or politicians. Legislators determine the political institutions constraining politicians' behavior and politicians compete for gaining the power to make decisions about the level of the public good. We...

Exploiting a unique institutional setting in Korea, this paper documents how politicians can increase the amount of government resources allocated through their social networks to the benefit of private firms connected to these networks. After winning the election, the new president appoints...

In this paper, I examine the role of firm lobbying in shaping the structure of US production networks, and its implications for misallocation in production networks across space. Using several instrumental variable strategies, I establish that firms that lobby have more buyers and suppliers, and...