In order to understand inefficient institutions, one needs to understand what mightcause the breakdown of a political version of the Coase Theorem. This paper considersan environment populated by ex-ante identical agents and develops a model of powerand distribution where institutions (the...

The aim of the paper is to study the relation between the demand for human rights and foreconomic prosperity. It analyzes the demand not, as it is often done in the literature, from the“voice” perspective (political activity), but rather looks at the “exit” perspective...

How does technological progress in financial intermediation affect the economy? To address this questiona costly-state verification framework is embedded into a standard growth model. In particular, financialintermediaries can invest resources to monitor the returns earned by firms. The...

Which are the basic strategic options of young scientists in the process of scientific competition? Which are the basic structural conditions influencing the outcome of strategic actions? What strategic choices should be made depending on given structural conditions? In thispaper we approach...

Is the reputation of a firm tradeable when the previous owner has toretire even though ownership change is observable? The authors of this paper consider a competitive market in which a share of owners must retire in each period. New owners, observing only recent profits, bid for the firms...

The authors determines a two product company, that sells their products with different quality under an umbrella brand.

In the last years more and more consumers evince increasing interest in fair traded products. This trade conceptis designed to help mainly producers of agricultural products to keep some basic social producing criteria. Thedifferent Fair-Trade-Organisations try to implement better work- and life...

This paper analyzes a procurement setting with identical firms and stochastic innovations. In contrast to the previous literature, I show that a procurer who cannot charge entry fees may prefer a fixed-prize tournament to a first-price auction. The reason is that holding an auction may leave...

I compare an auction and a tournament in a procurement setting where a noncontractible signal about the quality that each firm is able to supply is observed by the procurer and all competing firms. Signals are affected by firms noncontractibleinvestments in R&D and the procurers precision of...

In this paper, I describe and analyze the phenomenon of informal development collaborationbetween firms in the field of embedded Linux, a type of open source software. Toexplain the observed phenomenon of voluntary revealing, I develop a duopoly model ofquality competition. The central...