We propose a simple informational theory to explain why autocratic regimes introduce local elections. Because citizens have better information on local officials than the distant central government, delegation of authority via local elections improves selection and performance of local officials.

A receiver wants to learn multidimensional information from a sender, but she has capacity to verify only one dimension. The sender’s payoff depends on the belief he induces, via an exogenously given monotone function. We show that by using a randomized verification strategy, the receiver can learn the sender’s information fully if the...

Inspired by the Paris Agreement on climate change, this paper analyzes a novel bargaining game in which each party quantifies its own contribution (to a public good, for example), before the set of pledges must be accepted. I first show that, if the tolerance for delay is uncertain, each equilibrium pledge coincides with an asymmetric Nash...

The Legacy of War on Fiscal Capacity
queralt_war_legacy_jan18_20.pdf