Commonsense wisdom claims that majoritarian parliaments produce more efficient governments than proportional ones, because there are less decisors involved. Empirical evidence gives poor support to this claim. A possible explanation is that the real decisors may be not the parties, but the...

It is suggested that it is possible to enhance employment through a large reduction of the cost of newly hired workers, with no changes in net wage. If the unemployment is high, this policy is almost surely efficient, but for minor caveats. 400 italian entrepreneurs where asked to assess the...

The paper presents the results of some simulations of the effect of the invasion of non-cooperating subjects into a community adopting a cooperative convention. The convention is described by an indefinitely repeated prisoner-dilemma game. We check the effects on the robustness of the...