The framework of Bodlaender et al. (ICALP 2008) and Fortnow and Santhanam (STOC 2008) allows us to exclude the existence of polynomial kernels for a range of problems under reasonable complexity-theoretical assumptions. However, there are also some issues that are not addressed by this framework, including the existence of Turing kernels such as the “kernelization” of Leaf Out Branching(k) into...

This paper identifies a family of scoring rules that are robust against coalitional manipulations that result in inefficient outcomes. We discuss the robustness of a number of Condorcet consistent and “point runoff” voting rules against such inefficient manipulation and classify voting rules according to their potential vulnerability to inefficient manipulation.

Many economists and social scientists have recently emphasized the importance of government policies, economic, political and legal institutions, and more broadly, the organization of society.1 There is also mounting evidence that various institutional features are indeed important for economic growth.2 Nevertheless, despite important theoretical advances, we still lack an organizational framew...

We propose a dynamic model of investment and trade in a market of a specialized technology subject to two main frictions. First, agents cannot raise outside capital. Second, a random group of agents will have the opportunity to invest in new technology and there is no market to insure against this shock. The first friction implies the presence of invesment cycles with abundant invesment and low...

Inefficient product derivation practices can greatly diminish the productivity gains expected from a software product line approach. As a foundation for systematic and efficient product derivation a better understanding of the underlying activities in industrial product line development is required. This research has been developing a process framework that comprises important tasks product lin...

The concept of efficient portfolios plays an important role in modern financial theory and practice. Although there is an extensive and growing literature that focuses on testing portfolio efficiency, outside of mean-variance optimization, which has several serious shortcomings, no systematic methodology for building efficient portfolios from inefficient indices has been developed. This paper a...

This paper analyses the efficiency consequences of lobbying in a production economy with imperfect commitment. We first show that the Pareto efficiency result found for truthful equilibria of common agency games in static exchange economies no longer holds under these more general conditions. We construct a model of pressure groups where the set of efficient truthful common-agency equilibria ha...