Advertisements provide consumers with knowledge about private products, whereas political information is required to provide voters with knowledge of public issues. Modern information technologies and globalization are increasing the exposure of individuals to information. Goods advertising is...

Behavioral economics presents a "paternalistic" rationale for intervention by a benevolent government. This paper studies the desirability of various forms of collective action when government decisions are determined via the political process in response to votes by time inconsistent voters. We...

Dictators, even those who seize power with the intention of helping the nation, frequently morph over time into tyrants. There may be many reasons for this. This paper focuses on one interesting and arguably pervasive driver behind this process. A model is developed which shows that the series...

This paper analyzes grading competition between instructors of elective courses when students shop for high course scores, the instructors maximize class size, and the school imposes a ceiling on mean course scores to limit grade inflation. Under this grading norm, we demonstrate that curriculum...

That institutions matter is widely accepted among economists and so are social norms as an important category of informal institutions. Social norms matter in many economic situations, but in particular for markets. The economic literature has studied the interrelation between markets and social...

That institutions matter is widely accepted among economists and so are social norms as an important category of informal institutions. Social norms matter in many economic situations, but in particular for markets. The economic literature has studied the interrelation between markets and social...

Developing countries may have relatively higher levels of conspicuous consumption, because of extreme income inequalities. In spite of the massive volume of “foreign” research, the exact nature of conspicuous consumption has not been fully investigated. Drawing upon existing relevant...

We conduct an experiment where subjects are matched in groups of three and vote on a moral transgression. Analyzing different voting rules, the frequency of votes for the moral transgression increases with the number of votes required for it. This effect persists when considering pivotal votes...