Social and economic development requires some degree of stable policy making. The instability of group decision making under majority rule ahs preoccupied social theorists since Condorcet. In theory, subtle institutional modifications to pure majority rule should induce stability. This paper...

The authors examine how negotiators' risk preferences influence the formation of coalitions. Joining a coalition may either increase or mitigate risk depending on the nature of the bargaining problem. In an experimental setting, the authors test whether relative risk preferences influence the...

Important decisions are often determined by group vote. Institutional provisions may stipulate who has the authority to determine the group's agenda. According to cooperative game theory, this privilege gives the leader a great deal of power to control the outcome. In a series of experiments,...

This chapter states that institutions and preferences are hopelessly confounded with the world of politics. Starting with data about institutional variation and variation in policy outcomes, it is impossible to make any hard and fast inferences about the impact of institutional features on...

The principal-agent problem is fundamental to organization design. A principal must negotiate an incentive contract to motivate a more risk averse agent to undertake costly actions that cannot be observed. In rational choice theory, the problem is solved through an inefficient shifting of risk...