The Internal Job Market of the IMF's Economist Program

This paper shows how the internal job market for participants in the IMF's Economist Program (EPs) could be redesigned to eliminate most of the shortcomings of the current system. The new design is based on Gale and Shapley's (1962) deferred acceptance algorithm and generates an efficient and stable outcome. An Excel-based computer program, EP-Match, implements the algorithm and applies it to the internal job market for EPs. The program can be downloaded from http://www.people.hbs.edu/gbarron/EP-Match_for_Excel.htm. Copyright 2005, International Monetary Fund

The Value of Commitment in Contests and Tournaments when Observation is Costly

We study the value of commitment in contests and tournaments when there are costs for the follower to observe the leader's behavior. In a contest, the follower can pay to observe the leader's effort but cannot observe the effectiveness of that effort. In a tournament, the follower can pay to observe the effectiveness of the leader's effort but not the effort itself. We show that this distinction matters significantly: When observation is costly, the value of commitment vanishes entirely in sequential and endogenous move contests, regardless of the size of the observation cost. By contrast, in tournaments, the value of commitment is preserved completely, provided that the observation costs are sufficiently small.Contests, Tournaments, Rent-Seeking, Commitment, Costly Leader Games

Demand for Slant: How Abstention Shapes Voters? Choice of News Media

Political commentators warn that the fragmentation of the modern media landscape induces voters to withdraw into ?information cocoons? and segregate along ideological lines. We show that the option to abstain breaks ideological segregation and generates ?cross-over? in news consumption: voters with considerable leanings toward a candidate demand information that is less biased toward that candidate than voters who are more centrist. This non-monotonicity in the demand for slant makes voters? ideologies non-recoverable from their choice of news media and generates disproportionate demand for media outlets that are centrist or only moderately biased. It also implies that polarization of the electorate may lead to ideological moderation in news consumption. Thus, our results cast doubt on the oft-prophesied, imminent demise of mainstream media and may help to explain recent empirical findings showing less ideological segregation in news consumption than predicted by extant theories

The Value of Commitment in Contests and Tournaments when Observation is Costly

We study the value of commitment in contests and tournaments when there are costs for the follower to observe the leader's behavior. In a contest, the follower can pay to observe the leader's effort but cannot observe the effectiveness of that effort. In a tournament, the follower can pay to observe the effectiveness of the leader's effort but not the effort itself. We show that this distinction matters significantly: When observation is costly, the value of commitment vanishes entirely in sequential and endogenous move contests, regardless of the size of the observation cost. By contrast, in tournaments, the value of commitment is preserved completely, provided that the observation costs are sufficiently small

Demand for Slant: How Abstention Shapes Voters' Choice of News Media

Political commentators warn that the fragmentation of the modern media landscape induces voters to withdraw into 'information cocoons' and segregate along ideological lines. We show that the option to abstain breaks ideological segregation and generates 'cross-over' in news consumption: voters with considerable leanings towards a candidate demand information that is less biased towards that candidate than voters who are more centrist. This non-monotonicity in the demand for slant makes voters' ideologies non-recoverable from their choice of news media and generates disproportionate demand for media outlets that are centrist or only moderately biased. It also implies that polarisation of the electorate may lead to an ideological moderation in news consumption. © 2014 Royal Economic Society

On the buyability of voting bodies

We study vote buying by competing interest groups in a variety of electoral and contractual settings. While increasing the size of a voting body reduces its buyability in the absence of competition, we show that larger voting bodies may be more buyable than smaller voting bodies when interest groups compete. In contrast, imposing the secret ballot is an effective way to fight vote buying in the presence of competition, but much less so in its absence. Regardless of competition, the option to contract on both votes and outcomes is worthless, as it does not affect buyability compared to contracting only on votes. The option to contract on votes and vote shares, on the other hand, is extremely valuable: it allows the first mover to effectively nullify competition and obtain its preferred policy at almost the monopoly cost.corruption; elections; lobbying; vote buying