This short article contributes to the Elgar Encyclopedia of Public Choice by summarizing the literature on the measurement of democracy. I proceed in two step. In the first part, I describe the classical approach for producing a measure of democracy and sketch an alternative approach. The second...

We present a simple model, illustrating how democracy may improve the quality of the economic institutions. The model further suggests that institutional quality varies more across autocracies than across democracy and that the positive effect of democracies on economic institutional quality...

Imposing a minimum quality standard (MQS) is conventionally regarded as harmful if firms compete in quantities. This, however, ignores dynamic effects. We show that an MQS can hinder collusion, resulting in dynamic welfare gains that reduce and may even outweigh the usual static losses. Verdicts...

In markets with quality unobservable to buyers, third-party certification is often the only instrument to increase transparency. While both sellers and buyers have a demand for certification, its role differs fundamentally: sellers use it for signaling, buyers use it for inspection. Seller...

This paper analyzes optimal product lines when consumers differ both in their taste for quality and in their desire for social image. The market outcome features partial pooling and product differentiation that is not driven by heterogeneous valuations for quality but by image concerns. A...

We investigate the achievement impact of alternative uses of student assessments. Our dataset covers over 2 million students in 59 countries observed over 6 waves in the international PISA test 2000-2015. Our empirical model exploits the country panel dimension to investigate assessment reforms...

This paper considers a market in which only the incumbent's quality is publicly known. The entrant's quality is observed by the incumbent and some fraction of informed consumers. This leads to price signalling rivalry between the duopolists, because the incumbent gains and the entrant loses when...

Review systems including quantitative measures as well as text-based expression of experiences are omnipresent in today’s digital platform economy. This paper studies the existence of reputation inflation, i.e. unjustified increases in ratings, with a special focus of heterogeneity between...

As illicit substances move into the legal product space, substitution patterns with legal products become more salient. In particular, marijuana legalization may have implications for the use of other legal “sin” goods. We estimate a structural model of multi-product use of illegal and legal...

I study a cheap talk model between a buyer and a seller with two goods for sale. There is two-sided (independent) private information with sequential, two-way communication. In the first stage, the buyer communicates her private preferences to the seller. In the second stage, the seller...