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This paper proposes an argument that explains incumbency advantage with-out recurring to the collective irresponsibility of legislatures. For that purpose, we exploit the informational value of incumbency: incumbency confers voters information about governing politicians not available from challengers. Because there are many reasons for high reelection rates diferent from incumbency status, we propose a measure of incumbency advantage that improves the use of pure reelection success. We also study the relationship between incumbency advantage and ideological and selection biases. An important implication of our analysis is that the literature linking incumbency and legislature irresponsibility most likely provides an overestimation of the latter.

ABSTRACTThis paper surveys selectively several contributions to the understanding of how cooperatives may cope with the interplay between meritocracy and efficiency when public decisions are taking by voting and the supply of labor is freely decided by each member. This outlines the main trade‐off faced by cooperatives. In particular, the degree of meritocracy is limited by three factors: (1) efficiency, because too much meritocracy encourages too much work from the socially optimal point of view; (2) meritocracy encourages sabotage; and (3) voting, because workers may prefer inefficient reward schemes as long as they are individually profitable.

AbstractWe analyze a two-period contest in which agents may become bankrupt at the end of the first period. A bankrupt agent is excluded from the contest in the second period of the game. We investigate the existence of a subgame perfect equilibrium in pure strategies. We distinguish between a borrowing equilibrium in which at least one agent might be bankrupted and a non borrowing equilibrium in which no agent is bankrupted. We prove that the former occurs when the agent taking loans is relatively poor and the future does not matter very much. This action represents the Despair Effect, in which severely handicapped agents take actions that jeopardize their existence in the long run but are currently helpful. We find conditions under which borrowing and non borrowing equilibria overlap and do not overlap. We provide an example in which no equilibrium exists.

In this paper we present a model of war between two rational and completely informed players. We show that in the absence of binding agreements war can be avoided in many cases by one player transferring money to the other player. In most cases, the "rich" country transfers part of its money to the "poor" country. But when the military proficiency of the "rich" country is sufficiently high the "poor" country stops the war by transferring part of its resources to the "rich" country. War cannot be avoided by transfers when inequality of resources is very large or the cost of war is sufficiently low. ; Publicado

In this paper we present a model of war between two rational and completely informed players. We show that in the absence of binding agreements war can be avoided in many cases by one player transferring money to the other player. In most cases, the "rich" country transfers part of her money to the "poor" country. Only when the military proficiency of the "rich" country is sufficiently great, it could be that the "poor" country can stop the war by transfering part of its resources to the "rich" country.

AbstractWe model a dynamic duopoly in which firms can potentially drive their rivals from the market. For some parameter values, the Cournot equilibrium outcome cannot be sustained in an infinitely repeated setting. In those cases, there is a Markov perfect equilibrium in mixed strategies in which one firm, eventually, will exit the market with probability one. Producer surplus in the maximum collusive outcome is greater under bankruptcy consideration, because the outcome that maximizes joint profits is skewed in favor of the more efficient firm. Consumer surplus and social welfare also increase in many cases, although those effects are generally ambiguous.

We analyze the evolution of organizations which take decisions on whom to hire and how to share the output by plurality voting. Agents are grouped in three classes, high, medium and low productivity. We study the evolution of political power and show that in some cases, rational agents who value the future may yield political power to another class. This is what we call the relinquish effect. We show that high productivity agents may receive less than their individual output, i.e. exploitation is possible. We also show that high productivity agents may be left out in the cold because their entrance in an organization may threaten the dominance of other classes. We call this political unemployment. ; Thanks to the MOMA network under the Project ECO2014-57673-REDT for financial support. The first author acknowledges financial support from ECO2014 53051, SGR2014-515 and PROMETEO/2013/037. Luis Corchon and Antonio Romero-Medina acknowledge financial support from MEC under Project ECO2014_57442_P, and financial support from the Ministerio Economía y Competitividad (Spain), Grants MYGRANT and MDM 2014-0431.

We analyze the evolution of organizations which take decisions on whomto hire and how to share the output by plurality voting. Agents are grouped in threeclasses, high, medium and low productivity.We study the evolution of political powerand show that in some cases, rational agents who value the future may yield politicalpower to another class. This is what we call the relinquish effect. We show that high productivity agents may receive less than their individual output, i.e. exploitation is possible.We also showthat high productivity agents may be left out in the cold because their entrance in an organization may threaten the dominance of other classes.We call this political unemployment ; Thanks to the MOMA network under the Project ECO2014-57673-REDT for financial support. The first author acknowledges financial support from ECO2014 53051, SGR2014-515 and PROMETEO/2013/037. Luis Corchon and Antonio Romero-Medina acknowledge financial support from MEC under Project ECO2014_57442_P, and financial support from the Ministerio Economía y Competitividad (Spain), Grants MYGRANT and MDM 2014-0431.