We examine how the final say in a sequence of proposals for local public project provision, financing, and redistribution can be channeled towards socially desirable outcomes, thereby breaking the dictatorial power of the last agenda-setter. Individuals are heterogeneous with some citizens...

The most fundamental form of systemic risk in modern financial networks is contagion. In this article we describe a homogeneous banking system (banks with identical preferences and the same size of total assets) with interconnectedness: banks own shares in each others' assets. Using these...