In this paper we present a model where agents can choose between 1 productive and rent-seeking activities.We consider two governance institutions: 2 autocracy and parliament rule. Under autocracy rent-seeking reflects the taste 3 of the autocrat for such activities. Under parliament rule rent-seeking depends 4 on parliament voting. We show that under parliament rule the size of rent5 seeking ma...

The first European elections in the Union of 25 were held on 10-13 June 2004. As a result, the European Parliament has become the world’s largest democratically-elected parliamentary chamber, having grown from 198 members before the first direct elections in 1979 to the present total of 732, bringing together representatives of over 100 different political parties from across a continent. The f...

Initiatives leading to even modest reduction in animal use at major U.S. universities are likely to continue to face strong opposition. At least, that's the conclusion the author draws from his efforts at Northwestern University. In fact, despite a growing body of evidence that animal-based research is flawed at best and misleading or un-scientific at worst its use is growing at Northwestern an...

This paper presents a replication algorithm that implements a highly-available, non-deterministic state machine. Our algorithm generalizes the Paxos parliament algorithm of Lamport to cope with non-deterministic computations, while preserving its nice resilience and e ciency properties. The algorithm is surprisingly simple, thanks to the use of two powerful underlying abstractions: weak consens...