This paper models the early dynamics of insurgency using an agent-based computer simulation of civilians, insurgents, and soldiers. In the simulation, insurgents choose to attack government forces, which then strike back. Such government counterattacks may result in the capture or killing of insurgents, may make nearby civilians afraid to become insurgents, but may also increase the anger of su...

Governments have been thrust to the forefront of health care reform efforts as growth in government health care costs was faster than growth in all other sponsor sectors in 1991. In the business sector, real health care costs per worker have risen 65 times faster than real wages and salaries per worker during the past 26 years. Households continue to devote 5 percent of income after taxes to he...

This paper provides a theory of a parliamentary government system with proportional representation elections and policy-motivated parties and voters. In a symmetric, spatial model governments are majoritarian, they and their policies are durable, and voters elect minority parliaments in every period. A continuum of (Markov) political equilibria exist with policies that represent concessions to ...

Volatility and Growth: Governments are Key There exists a persistent disagreement in the literature over the effect of business cycles on economic growth. This paper offers a solution to this disagreement, suggesting that volatility carries a positive direct effect, but also a negative indirect effect, operating through the insurance mechanism of government size. Theoretically, the net growth e...

the variety of issues posed by the internet today cannot be easily neglected by jurists and politicians. these are problems that the international community has no other way but to find appropriate solutions to. the first and most important issue faced in relation to the internet, is the problem of internet governance. the internet is currently managed by the icann, an american company and the ...

We study the dynamic selection of governments. A government consists of a subset of the individuals in the society. The competence level of the government in o ce determines collective utilities (e.g., by determining the amount and quality of public goods), and each individual derives additional utility from being part of the government (e.g., corruption or rents from holding o ce). We characte...

We construct a simple career concerns model where high-powered incentives can distort the composition of effort by inducing excessive signaling. We show that in the presence of this type of career concerns, markets typically fail to limit competitive pressures and cannot commit to the desirable low-powered incentives. Firmsmay be able to weaken incentives and improve efficiency by obscuring inf...