This paper incorporates two-stage education in a political economy model to study the endogenous determination of public budget allocation across education stages. With hierarchical education, individuals’ benefits from higher education depend on their qualifications, and congestion arises when higher enrollment lowers schooling quality. In less developed economies, the top class has dominant p...

Strategic games are considered where the players derive their utilities from participation in certain “processes.” Two subclasses consisting exclusively of potential games are singled out. In the first, players choose where to participate, but there is a unique way of participation, the same for all players. In the second, the participation structure is fixed, but each player may have an arbitr...

If people are free to contract, will outcomes be efficient? We study the question through the lens of a non-cooperative model of contract negotiations, considering both compulsory and voluntary participation in negotiations. In either case, we find that all consistent equilibria of the contracting game are efficient in the case of two players. With mandatory participation, efficiency is attaina...

Participative software systems are a new class of software systems whose development does not end at the deployment but requires continued user participation and contribution. They need to provide both solutions to users and a participation framework that entails technical and social challenges. Metadesign is a promising approach to guide the development of participative software systems. Drawi...