An altruistic agent who may aid a person with a low income may cause that person to exert little effort to increase his income. Such behavior generates a Dilemma, in which welfare is lower than when no one is altruistic. We show how governmental transfers, which do not allow for reallocation...

A winning coalition which sets policy cannot always ensure that members of the coalition will be the ones getting benefits. Different jurisdictions (including members of the winning coalition) may then engage in costly rent seeking. Maximizing the welfare of the winning coalition may therefore...

An agent may be able to address a task at different times, with the state of nature more favorable to the task in some periods over others. Success on a task will therefore more greatly improve the agent's reputation following success on a task if he is constrained in choosing when to address...

Consider an organization that solicits private contributions, which will partly be used to provide a public good. The organization's goals is to maximize its profits, namely the difference between aggregate contributions and the amount it spends on providing the public good. An equilibrium...

An altruistic agent who may aid a person with a low income may induce that person to exert little effort to increase his income. Such behavior generates a Good Samaritan Dilemma, in which welfare is lower than when no one is altruistic. Governmental transfers, which restrict reallocation from a...

This paper addresses the puzzle of why redistributive legislation, which benefits a small minority, may pass with overwhelming majorities. It models a legislature in which the same agenda setter serves for two periods, showing how he can exploit a legislature (completely) in the first period by...

This paper presents a mechanism inducing costly research and innovation in the absence of intellectual property rights. The mechanism relies on forward contracting between the provider of the innovation and firms or individuals that benefit from the pecuniary effects of the innovation, rather...

Consider a monopolist which sells a durable good and also consumables that require use of the durable good. After the firm sells the durable good, it has an incentive to charge a price greater than marginal cost for the consumables. Realizing that they will have to pay a high price for...

A firm may induce voters or elected politicians to support a policy it favors by suggesting that it is more likely to invest in a district whose voters or representatives support the policy. In equilibrium, no one vote may be decisive, and the policy may gain strong support though the majority...

We consider electoral competition between two political candidates. Each can target private benefits to some groups. A candidate has an incentive to offer high benefits in the initial period, to deter the other candidate from offering yet higher benefits to the same group in a later period. We...