We develop and analyze a tractable empirical model for strategic network formation that can be estimated with data from a single network at a single point in time. We model the network formation as a sequential process where in each period a single randomly selected pair of agents has the...

Based on well-established informational attributes of principal-agent theory, we argue that lower court treatment of existing Supreme Court precedent provides useful information regarding the actual, as opposed to expected, policy consequences of that precedent. Thus, conditional on ideological...

International relations and legal theories on treaty design and participation have relied heavily on the structure of bargaining problems, the allocation of power in the international system, and interest group politics to explain states’ preferences for cooperation. Using experiments drawn...

Acyclic digraphs arise in many natural and artificial processes. Among the broader set, dynamic citation networks represent a substantively important form of acyclic digraphs. For example, the study of such networks includes the spread of ideas through academic citations, the spread of...

Why do individuals engage in personally costly, partisan activities that benefit others? If individuals act according to rational self-interest, then partisan activity occurs only when the benefits of that activity exceed its costs. However, laboratory experiments suggest that many people are...

Altruism refers to a willingness to pay a personal cost to make others better off. Past research has established a link between altruism and political participation, primarily among college students. We show that dictator game behavior predicts support for humanitarian norms and donations to...

Participants in laboratory games are often willing to alter others' incomes at a cost to themselves and this behaviour has the effect of promoting cooperation. What motivates this action is unclear: punishment and reward aimed at promoting cooperation cannot be distinguished from attempts to...

Scholars have recently extended the traditional calculus of participation model by adding a term for benefits to others. We advance this work by distinguishing theoretically a concern for others in general (altruism) from a concern for others in certain groups (social identification). We posit...