The main drawback of the public-policy contest is that the notion of contest success function, a crucial component of the contest model, does not have micro-foundations and, therefore, the random behavior of the government seems ad-hoc. In the present paper we propose a partial micro-foundation...

The compromise enhancing effect of lobbying on public policy has been established in two typical settings. In the first, lobbies are assumed to act as 'principals' and the setters of the policy (the candidates in a Downsian electoral competition or the elected policy maker in a citizen-...

The quest for benefit from existing wealth or by seeking privileged benefit through influence over policy is known as rent seeking. Much rent seeking activity involves government and political decisions and is therefore in the domain of political economy, although it can also take place in...

The quest for benefit from existing wealth or by seeking privileged benefit through influence over policy is known as rent seeking. Much rent seeking activity involves government and political decisions and is therefore in the domain of political economy, although it can also take place in...

The classic fair cake-cutting problem [Steinhaus, 1948] is extended by introducing geometric constraints on the allocated pieces. Specifically, agents may demand to get their share as a square or a rectangle with a bounded length/width ratio. This is a plausible constraint in realistic...

The means of contest design may include differential taxation of the prize. This paper considers all-pay auctions under complete information and establishes that, given a revenue-maximizing contest designer who faces a balanced-budget constraint, the optimal taxation scheme corresponding to an...

This paper presents a general formal model for analyzing political entry decisions in strategic contexts. The model focuses on dichotomous entry decisions made by potential entrants in a full information setting. The players in the proposed entry game are truly effective equals. That is, they...

A substantial number of regulatory frameworks are commonly viewed by impartial observers as inordinately complex. Is there an explanation for this phenomenon? Employing a partial equilibrium model, this paper approaches the problem of complexity from a political-economy vantage point. It...

This paper studies collective contests with endogenous cost sharing, general effort costs and intra-group heterogeneity of prize-valuation. Our objective is to clarify the relationship between cost sharing, intra-group heterogeneity within the competing groups and the elasticity of the marginal...