This paper investigates the social preferences over labor market exibility, in a general equilibrium model of dynamic labor demand. We demonstrate that how the economy responds to productivity shocks depends on the power of labor to extract rents and on the status quo level of the firing cost....

We develop a theory of endogenous regimes transitions (with a focus on democratic consolidation), which emphasizes the role of political culture and of its interaction with political institutions. Political culture re?flects the extent of individual commitment across citizens to defend democracy...

We develop a theory of endogenous political entrenchment in a simple two-party dy- namic model of income redistribution with probabilistic voting. A partially self-interested left-wing party may implement (entrenchment) policies reducing the income of its own constituency, the lower class, in...

The Ramón y Cajal Program promotes the hiring of top researchers in Spanish R&D centers and academic institutions. The centralized mechanism associated to the Program is analyzed. The paper models it as a two-sided matching market and studies if it provides the incentives to increase the...

We offer a rationale for elections that take place in the shadow of power. Factions unhappy with policy can threaten violence. But when they lack common knowledge about (i) one another's rationality, and (ii) their chances of victory at arms, mutual overconfidence can precipitate civil war. We...

In this paper we present a model of implementation based on the idea that agents renegotiate unfeasible allocations. We characterize the maximal set of Social Choice Correspondences that can be implemented in Nash Equilibrium with a class of renegotiation functions that do not reward agents for...

In a common-values election with two candidates voters receive a signal about which candidate is superior. They can acquire information that improves the precision of the signal. Electors differ in their information acquisition costs. For large electorates a non negligible fraction of voters...

We analyze the evolution on the design of a policy measure promoted by the Spanish Government: the Ramón y Cajal Program. In the first calls of the Program, an eligibility requirement for a researcher was a preacceptance from at least one Spanish research insti- tution. This requirement was...

A common assumption in Political Science literature is policy commitment: candidates maintain their electoral promises. We drop such assumption and we show that costless electoral campaign can be an effective way of transmitting information to voters. The result is robust to relevant equilibrium...

We investigate how nondemocratic regimes use the military and how this can lead to the emergence of military dictatorships. Nondemocratic regimes need the use of force in order to remain in power, but this creates a political moral hazard problem; a strong military may not simply work as an...