Since campaign finance reform is usually motivated by the concern that existing legislation can not effectively prevent campaign contributions to 'buy favors', this paper assumes that contributions influence political decisions. But, given that it is also widely recognized that interest groups...

In models of non-deterministic contest, players exert irreversible effort in order to increase their probability of winning a prize. The most prominent functional form of the win probability in the literature is the so-called logit" contest success function. We provide a simple micro-foundation...

This paper examines the incentives of a firm to invest in information about the quality of its product and to disclose its findings. If the firm holds back information, it might be detected and fined. We show that optimal monitoring is determined by a trade-off. Stricter enforcement reduces the...

This paper examines the incentives of a firm to invest in information about the quality of its product and to disclose its findings. If the firm holds back information, it might be detected and fined. We show that optimal monitoring is determined by a trade-off. Stricter enforcement reduces the...

Scandals of selective reporting of clinical trial results by pharmaceutical firms have underlined the need for more transparency in clinical trials. We provide a theoretical framework which reproduces incentives for selective reporting and yields three key implications concerning regulation....

We examine the effects of providing more accurate information to a political decision-maker who is lobbied by competing interests. Conventional wisdom holds that such a bias in the direction of the correct decision improves the efficiency of government. We provide a formal definition of bias...

Because campaign finance reform is usually motivated by the concern that existing legislation cannot effectively prevent campaign contributions to "buy favors," this article assumes that contributions influence political decisions. But, given that it is also widely recognized that interest...

We examine the incentives of an interest group to provide verifiable policy-relevant information to a political decision-maker and to exert political pressure on her. We show that both lobbying instruments are interdependent. In our view information provision is a risky attempt to affect the...