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Abstract
An important task for organisations is establishing truthful communication between parties with differing interests. This task is made particularly challenging when the accuracy of the information is poorly observed or not at all. In these settings, incentive contracts based on the accuracy of information will not be very effective. This paper considers an alternative mechanism that does not require any signal of the accuracy of any information communicated to provide incentives for truthful communication. Rather, an expert sacrifices future participation in decision-making to influence the current period's decision in favour of their preferred project. This mechanism captures a notion often described as 'political capital' whereby an individual is able to achieve their own preferred decision in the current period at the expense of being able to exert influence in future decisions ('spending political capital'). When the first-best is not possible in this setting, I show that experts hold more influence than under the first-best and that, in a multi-agent extension, a finite team size is optimal. Together these results suggest that a small number of individuals hold excessive influence in organisations.

We construct a bivariate factor of political stability and economic policy confidence, and show that it commands a significant premium of up to 15% per annum, in the global, developed, and emerging markets, robust to ICAPM, Fama-French five-factor, Carhart, and ICAPM Redux. We propose an international capital asset pricing model incorporating the political factor, and test estimations in the global, developed, and emerging markets. The model explains up to 77% of cross-sectional returns, has good predictive power, performs better than the benchmark models in pricing equity indices and explains up to an incremental 25% of cross-sectional returns, and is robust out of sample.

We construct a bivariate factor of political stability and economic policy confidence, and show that it commands a significant premium of up to 15% per annum, in the global, developed, and emerging markets, robust to ICAPM, Fama-French five-factor, Carhart, and ICAPM Redux. We propose an international capital asset pricing model incorporating the political factor, and test estimations in the global, developed, and emerging markets. The model explains up to 77% of cross-sectional returns, has good predictive power, performs better than the benchmark models in pricing equity indices and explains up to an incremental 25% of cross-sectional returns, and is robust out of sample.

This paper exploits five waves of the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) to investigate issues of social and political capital in rural Viet Nam. I analyse membership of the Communist Party, 'mass organizations' (Farmers' Union, Women's Union, etc.) and other voluntary organizations, trust, and the significance of family ties in economic transactions (e.g. the share of land tenants who are relatives of their landlord). The paper also presents fixed effects regressions exploring the effects of social and political capital on household income. Results indicate positive returns to Communist Party membership, trust and access to informal insurance.

This report reviews three quite different ways in which people acquire and make use of European political through the Commission, the Permanent Representatives Office and the European Parliament. Because it was commissioned by a Lisbon non-governmental institute, the Fundação Franciso Manuel dos Santos, the focus is on the experience of Portuguese. In the context of the 28 EU member states, Portugal is both medium size in population and among the older members of the European Union. Moreover, it is typical of the situation of citizens of the great majority of small and medium size EU member states: in order to fit into European institutions Portuguese must concentrate on what is of common interest and concern in many European countries.