While intergenerational transmission of entrepreneurship is a well-known regularity, we hypothesize that in a transition economy where the state retains an important role, those whose parents are government workers may also be more likely to become business owners. We test the hypothesis in...

While intergenerational transmission of entrepreneurship is a well-known regularity, we hypothesize that in an economy where the state retains an important role, those whose parents are government workers may also be more likely to become business owners. We test the hypothesis in China and show...

Limits on a government's capacity to enforce laws can result in multiple equilibria. If most agents comply, limited enforcement is sufficient to dissuade isolated agents from misbehaving. If most agents do not comply, overstretched enforcement capacity has a minimal impact on behavior. We study...

We consider a government collecting taxes from a large number of tax-payers using limited enforcement capacity. Under random enforcement, limited capacity results in multiple equilibria: if most agents comply, limited enforcement is sufficient to dissuade individual misbehavior; if most agents...

A principal seeks to efficiently allocate a productive public resource to a number of possible users. Vickrey–Clarke–Groves (VCG) mechanisms provide a detail-free way to do so provided users have deep pockets. In practice however, users may have limited resources. We study a dynamic...

In the context of collecting property taxes from 13432 households in a district of Lima (Peru), we investigate whether prioritized enforcement can improve the effective use of limited enforcement capacity. We randomly assign households to two treatment arms: one replicating the city's usual...