Law enforcement and legal presumptions

We compare two alternative legal presumptions, one more pro-defendant than the other, with the objective of reducing bureaucratic corruption to any target level at minimum social costs, broadly defined to include law enforcement costs, trial costs, and verdict error costs. In the absence of collusion possibilities between law enforcers and offenders, presumption of innocence involves lower social costs for low corruption targets while presumption of guilt has a cost advantage for high corruption targets. Allowing for collusion enlarges the corruption range over which the presumed innocence rule will dominate. However, there are two possible exceptions to this outcome, namely, if the government's law enforcement budget is limited and if the offenders can be penalized only up to a maximum permissible limit. In each of these cases, presumption of guilt may become the cost-effective rule. © 2001 Elsevier Science

Strategic information revelation in fundraising

We consider a model of voluntary contributions for a public project with random number of potential contributors. The fundraiser, who observes this number, has to decide whether to reveal or suppress the information before contributions are given. The fundraiser's objective is to collect maximal contributions. We show that whether the public project is convex or non-convex can be the key to the fundraiser's announcement decision. In the convex case, this number is always revealed. In the non-convex case the number may not be revealed at all or sometimes revealed only when it is in an intermediate range. In the presence of multiple equilibria, total contributions increase with the extent of concealment. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

Double-edged transparency in teams

10.1016/j.jpubeco.2011.01.009Journal of Public Economics957-8531-542JPBE

Peer transparency in teams: Does it help or hinder incentives?

10.1111/j.1468-2354.2012.00720.xInternational Economic Review5341257-128

Distributing awards efficiently: More on King Solomon's problem

We consider a multi-awards generalization of King Solomon's problem: k identical prizes should be distributed, without any monetary transfers in equilibrium, among n > k agents, with the top k valuation agents receiving the awards. Glazer and Ma [1989. Efficient allocation of a prize - King Solomon's dilemma. Games Econ. Behav. 1, 222-233] analyzed the single-prize version of this problem assuming complete information amongst the agents. We show that with more than two agents the mechanism of Glazer and Ma admits inefficient equilibria and thus fails to solve Solomon's problem. So, first we modify their mechanism to rule out inefficient equilibria and implement efficient prize allocation for arbitrary number of agents. Then it is shown that the multiple-awards case can be implemented in subgame perfect equilibrium by a repeated application of the modified single-award mechanism. Finally, we relax the informational assumption and show, using a generalized version of Olszewski's [2003. A simple and general solution to King Solomon's problem. Games Econ. Behav. 42, 315-318] mechanism, that multi-awards problem can also be implemented by iterative elimination of weakly dominated strategies. © 2004 Published by Elsevier Inc

Match-Fixing in a Monopoly Betting Market

A monopolist bookmaker may set betting odds on a fairly even contest to induce match-fixing by an influential corrupt punter. His loss to the corrupt punter is more than made up for by enticing enough ordinary punters to bet on the losing team. This result is in sharp contrast to competitive bookmaking, where even contests have been shown to be immune to fixing. The analysis also reveals a surprising result that the incidence of match-fixing can dramatically fall when match-fixing opportunities rise. This is shown by comparing two scenarios—when only one team is corruptible and when both are corruptible. For both teams corruptible, the bookmaker is uncertain about to which team the influential punter will have access, so carefully maneuvering the odds to induce match-fixing is too costly

Simple subscription mechanisms for excludable public goods

For excludable public goods, we propose simple mechanisms to uniquely implement a (core) stable and efficient production and cost-sharing outcome: consumers are asked to announce sequentially their minimal requested level of public good and a subscription towards its production. In one mechanism the subscriptions depend on the order of moves. In a second mechanism, the subscriptions are order-independent and thus symmetric. The equilibrium outcomes induced by our mechanisms are immune to strategic deviations by coalitions. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: H41, C72, D78. © 1999 Academic Press

Corrupt Bookmaking in a Fixed Odds Illegal Betting Market

Illegal betting in a two-team sports contest is studied with player sabotage instigated by a monopolist bookmaker. Whereas punters hold beliefs about the teams’ winning chances correlated with Nature's draw, the bookmaker's information is noise-free. Enforcement investigates with a higher probability, the greater the upset. In such an environment, if punters do not suspect match-fixing, the favourite is bribed, thus creating upsets and intensifying subsequent investigations. Match-fixing continues to hold even when punters are rational, provided that the bookie's beliefs are noisy: the bookie bribes the team he thinks is the favourite and the bettors bet on their perceived favourites

Distributing Awards Efficiently: More on King Solomon’s Problem

We consider a multi-award generalisation of King Solomon’s problem: k identical and indivisible awards should be distributed among agents, k 1) prizes efficiently in sub-game perfect equilibria without any monetary transfers in equilibrium. Finally, in the multi-awards case we relax the complete information assumption and achieve implementation of efficient allocation by iterative elimination of weakly dominated strategies, using generalisation of Olszewski’s (2003) mechanism.Solomon’s problem, prizes, implementation

Communication and authority with a partially informed expert

10.1111/1756-2171.12047RAND Journal of Economics451176-19