Showing papers on "Delegation published in 2013"
01 Jan 2013
TL;DR: A new consensus reaching model is presented which uses linguistic preferences and is designed to minimize the main problems that this kind of organization presents while incorporating the benefits that a Web 2.0 community offers.
Abstract: Web 2.0 communities are a quite recent phenomenon which involve large numbers of users and where communication between members is carried out in real time. Despite of those good characteristics, there is still a necessity of developing tools to help users to reach decisions with a high level of consensus in those new virtual environments. In this contribution a new consensus reaching model is presented which uses linguistic preferences and is designed to minimize the main problems that this kind of organization presents (low and intermittent participation rates, difficulty of establishing trust relations and so on) while incorporating the benefits that a Web 2.0 community offers (rich and diverse knowledge due to a large number of users, real-time communication, etc.). The model includes some delegation and feedback mechanisms to improve the speed of the process and its convergence towards a solution of consensus. Its possible application to some of the decision making processes that are carried out in the Wikipedia is also shown.
232 citations
Book•
22 Dec 2013
TL;DR: In this article, a theory of private authority is proposed and a century of delegation in international environmental law is discussed. But the authors do not discuss the role of private authorities in the Clean Development Mechanism.
Abstract: List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Acronyms xiii Introduction 1 Chapter 1. A Theory of Private Authority 26 Chapter 2. Agents of the State: A Century of Delegation in International Environmental Law 54 Chapter 3. Governors of the Market: The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Authority 78 Chapter 4. Atmospheric Police: Delegated Authority in the Clean Development Mechanism 104 Chapter 5. Atmospheric Accountants: Entrepreneurial Authority and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol 132 Chapter 6. Conclusion 163 Bibliography 183 Index 207
215 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider a general representation of the delegation problem, with and without money burning, and provide sufficient and necessary conditions under which an interval allocation is optimal for both perfect and monopolistic competition settings.
Abstract: We consider a general representation of the delegation problem, with and without money burning, and provide sufficient and necessary conditions under which an interval allocation is optimal. We also apply our results to the theory of trade agreements among privately informed governments. For both perfect and monopolistic competition settings, we provide conditions under which tariff caps are optimal. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
182 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors study the motivation and incentive effects of authority experimentally in an authority-delegation game and find that individuals retain authority even when its delegation is in their material interest, suggesting that authority has non-pecuniary consequences for utility.
Abstract: Authority and power permeate political, social, and economic life, but empirical knowledge about the motivational origins and consequences of authority is limited. We study the motivation and incentive effects of authority experimentally in an authoritydelegation game. Individuals often retain authority even when its delegation is in their material interest—suggesting that authority has nonpecuniary consequences for utility. Authority also leads to overprovision of effort by the controlling parties, while a large percentage of subordinates underprovide effort despite pecuniary incentives to the contrary. Authority thus has important motivational consequences that exacerbate the inefficiencies arising from suboptimal delegation choices. (JEL C92, D23, D82)
176 citations
Book•
29 Aug 2013
TL;DR: In this article, Fair Play: Participation, Delegation and Deregulation, and the Art Entrepreneur: Artists and Entrepreneurialism, and Space: Exclusion and Engagement.
Abstract: Introduction: Fair Play 1. Labour: Participation, Delegation and Deregulation 2. The 'Artrepreneur': Artists and Entrepreneurialism 3. Space: Exclusion and Engagement 4. Public/Private Capital: Arts Funding Cuts and Mixed Economies Afterword
157 citations
TL;DR: The authors studied four information aggregation structures commonly used by organizations to evaluate opportunities: individual decision making, delegation to experts, majority voting, and averaging of opinions, and found that delegation is the most effective structure when there is diversity of expertise, when accurate delegation is possible, and when a good fit between the firm's knowledge and the knowledge required by the environment.
Abstract: We study four information aggregation structures commonly used by organizations to evaluate opportunities: individual decision making, delegation to experts, majority voting, and averaging of opinions. Using a formal mathematical model, we investigate how the performance of each of these structures is contingent upon the breadth of knowledge within the firm and changes in the environment. Our model builds on work in the Carnegie tradition and in the group and behavioral decision-making literatures. We use the model to explore when delegation is preferable to other structures, such as voting and averaging. Our model shows that delegation is the most effective structure when there is diversity of expertise, when accurate delegation is possible, and when there is a good fit between the firm's knowledge and the knowledge required by the environment. Otherwise, depending on the knowledge breadth of the firm, voting or averaging may be the most effective structure. Finally, we use our model to shed light on whi...
96 citations
TL;DR: Delegation tends to outperform control when the manufacturer is uncertain about the tier 1 supplier's cost and believes that it is likely to be high and the firms use price-only contracts as opposed to quantity discount contracts.
Abstract: A manufacturer must choose whether to delegate component procurement to her tier 1 supplier or control it directly. Because of information asymmetry about suppliers' production costs and the use of simple quantity discount or price-only contracts, either delegation or control can yield substantially higher expected profit for the manufacturer. Delegation tends to outperform control when (1) the manufacturer is uncertain about the tier 1 supplier's cost and believes that it is likely to be high; (2) the manufacturer and the tier 1 supplier know the tier 2 supplier's cost or at least that it will be high; (3) the manufacturer has an alternative to engaging the tier 1 and tier 2 suppliers, such as in-house production; and (4) the firms use price-only contracts as opposed to quantity discount contracts. These results shed light on practices observed in the electronics industry.
92 citations
01 Jan 2013
TL;DR: Google is investing in client-side technologies, such as strong authentication with two-step verification using one-time passwords and public-key-based technology, for stronger user and device identification.
Abstract: Like many in the industry, the authors believe passwords and simple bearer tokens, such as cookies, are no longer sufficient to keep users safe. Google employs a base level of sophisticated server-side technologies, such as SSL and risk analysis, to protect users with plain old passwords; however, it's also investing in client-side technologies, such as strong authentication with two-step verification using one-time passwords and public-key-based technology, for stronger user and device identification. It's championing various approaches to access delegation, both in its applications and with third parties, so that end user credentials aren't passed around insecurely.
90 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: Rothblum et al. as mentioned in this paper constructed a 1-round delegation scheme for any language with time complexity t = t(n), where the running time of the prover is poly(t), the number of provers is poly (t), and the running times of the verifier is n · poly log(t).
Abstract: We construct a 1-round delegation scheme (i.e., argument-system) for every language computable in time t = t(n), where the running time of the prover is poly(t) and the running time of the verifier is n · polylog(t). In particular, for every language in P we obtain a delegation scheme with almost linear time verification. Our construction relies on the existence of a computational sub-exponentially secure private information retrieval (PIR) scheme. The proof exploits a curious connection between the problem of computation delegation and the model of multi-prover interactive proofs that are sound against no-signaling (cheating) strategies, a model that was studied in the context of multi-prover interactive proofs with provers that share quantum entanglement, and is motivated by the physical principle that information cannot travel faster than light. For any language computable in time t = t(n), we construct a multi-prover interactive proof (MIP) that is sound against no-signaling strategies, where the running time of the provers is poly(t), the number of provers is polylog(t), and the running time of the verifier is n · polylog(t). In particular, this shows that the class of languages that have polynomial-time MIPs that are sound against no-signaling strategies, is exactly EXP. Previously, this class was only known to contain PSPACE. To convert our MIP into a 1-round delegation scheme, we use the method suggested by Aiello et al . (ICALP, 2000), which makes use of a PIR scheme. This method lacked a proof of security. We prove that this method is secure assuming the underlying MIP is secure against no-signaling provers. ∗Microsoft Research. Email: yael@microsoft.com †Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ. Research supported by an Israel Science Foundation grant, by the I-CORE Program of the Planning and Budgeting Committee and the Israel Science Foundation, and by NSF grant numbers CCF-0832797, DMS-0835373. Email: ran.raz@weizmann.ac.il ‡Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Parts of this research were conducted while visiting Microsoft Research. This research was partially supported by the Minerva Foundation with funds from the Federal German Ministry for Education and Research. Email: ron.rothblum@weizmann.ac.il
88 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider a differentiated duopoly and endogenise the firm choice of the strategy variable (price or quantity) to play on the product market in the presence of network externalities.
77 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a model of investment provision under regulation between a distribution system operator (DSO) and a potential investor-generation is presented, and the results from the model confirm the hypothesis that network regulation should find a focal point, should integrate externalities in the performance assessment and should avoid wide delegation of contracting-billing for smart-grid investments.
01 Jun 2013
TL;DR: The proof exploits a curious connection between the problem of computation delegation and the model of multi-prover interactive proofs that are sound against no-signaling (cheating) strategies, a model that was studied in the context ofmulti-provers interactive proofs with provers that share quantum entanglement.
Abstract: We construct a 1-round delegation scheme for every language computable in time t=t(n) and space s=s(n), where the running time of the prover is poly(t) and the running time of the verifier is ~O(n + poly(s)) (where ~O hides polylog(t) factors).The proof exploits a curious connection between the problem of computation delegation and the model of multi-prover interactive proofs that are sound against no-signaling (cheating) strategies, a model that was studied in the context of multi-prover interactive proofs with provers that share quantum entanglement, and is motivated by the physical principle that information cannot travel faster than light.For any language computable in time t=t(n) and space s=s(n), we construct MIPs that are sound against no-signaling strategies, where the running time of the provers is poly(t), the number of provers is ~O(s), and the running time of the verifier is ~O(s+n).We then show how to use the method suggested by Aiello et-al (ICALP, 2000) to convert our MIP into a 1-round delegation scheme, by using a computational private information retrieval (PIR) scheme. Thus, assuming the existence of a sub-exponentially secure PIR scheme, we get our 1-round delegation scheme.
TL;DR: This paper explores two examples from the Open Science Grid (OSG), an initiative that distributes computational resources to geographically dispersed and otherwise loosely coordinated research teams, and extends the concept of delegation and applies it to thorny questions around the work of sustaining organization over time.
25 Feb 2013
TL;DR: This paper proves the selective-ID security of their proposal under the Decisional Bilinear Diffie-Hellman assumption in the standard model and proposes the first solution for efficiently delegating both the key generation and revocation functionalities in IBE systems.
Abstract: In the public key cryptosystems, revocation functionality is required when a secret key is corrupted by hacking or the period of a contract expires. In the public key infrastructure setting, numerous solutions have been proposed, and in the Identity Based Encryption (IBE) setting, a recent series of papers proposed revocable IBE schemes. Delegation of key generation is also an important functionality in cryptography from a practical standpoint since it allows reduction of excessive workload for a single key generation authority. Although efficient solutions for either revocation or delegation of key generation in IBE systems have been proposed, an important open problem is efficiently delegating both the key generation and revocation functionalities in IBE systems. Libert and Vergnaud, for instance, left this as an open problem in their CT-RSA 2009 paper. In this paper, we propose the first solution for this problem. We prove the selective-ID security of our proposal under the Decisional Bilinear Diffie-Hellman assumption in the standard model.
TL;DR: In this article, the impact of re-intergovernmentalization is manifested largely in the policy process rather than the policy outcome, which is a concern given the precarious nature of EMU's legitimacy and the loss of efficiency that delegation typically provides.
Abstract: The global financial and sovereign debt crises led to the creation of numerous new agreements and institutions to contain the current crisis and prevent future ones. These measures reinforce the historical trend towards the predominance of intergovernmental decision-making in economic and monetary union (EMU), going so far as to re-intergovernmentalize cooperation that had previously been decided upon by the Community method. Using principal–agent analysis, this contribution looks at fiscal policy cooperation since the outbreak of the sovereign debt crisis and considers how the impact of re-intergovernmentalization is manifested largely in the policy process rather than the policy outcome. However, this is still cause for concern given the precarious nature of EMU’s legitimacy and the loss of efficiency that delegation typically provides.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors studied the factors that affect the likelihood of a coalition agreement being written and how extensive they are, if written, and found that coalition agreements are written to contain policy drift and that it is directly related to the degree of hierarchy in the cabinet.
Abstract: The cabinet is a central actor in policy making in parliamentary systems. Yet, relatively little is known about how coalition cabinets operate. The delegation of decision-making authority to ministers invites policy drift, which threatens the cohesiveness of the cabinet's policy programme. Cabinets employ a variety of methods to contain policy drift. The writing of coalition agreements is among the major tools, but there are others, including limiting ministerial autonomy and the use of junior ministers to shadow ministers. The present study demonstrates that coalition agreements are written to contain policy drift and that it is directly related to the degree of hierarchy in the cabinet. It studies the factors that affect the likelihood of a coalition agreement being written and how extensive they are, if written. Among these are the ideological diversity found in the cabinet, the use of alternative methods for controlling ministers and the complexity of the bargaining situation.
TL;DR: It is estimated that if health IT were fully implemented in 30 percent of community-based physicians' offices, the demand for physicians would be reduced by about 4-9 percent, and these estimated impacts could more than double if comprehensive health IT systems were adopted by 70 percent of US ambulatory care delivery settings.
Abstract: Arguably, few factors will change the future face of the American health care workforce as widely and dramatically as health information technology (IT) and electronic health (e-health) applications. We explore how such applications designed for providers and patients will affect the future demand for physicians. We performed what we believe to be the most comprehensive review of the literature to date, including previously published systematic reviews and relevant individual studies. We estimate that if health IT were fully implemented in 30 percent of community-based physicians’ offices, the demand for physicians would be reduced by about 4–9 percent. Delegation of care to nurse practitioners and physician assistants supported by health IT could reduce the future demand for physicians by 4–7 percent. Similarly, IT-supported delegation from specialist physicians to generalists could reduce the demand for specialists by 2–5 percent. The use of health IT could also help address regional shortages of physic...
TL;DR: In this article, the influence of competitive spillovers among subsidiaries on the design of headquarters-subsidiary relationships is examined, focusing on multi-industry firms and competitive spillover across mark-and-sweep relationships.
Abstract: We examine the influence of competitive spillovers among subsidiaries on the design of headquarters-subsidiary relationships. We focus on multi-industry firms and competitive spillovers across mark...
Posted Content•
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compare the strategies through which India and Indonesia have regulated religion and addressed questions of what constitutes "the religious" in the post-independence period, and argue that what determines the consequences of the policy toward religion is less the choice of the implementing institution (i.e., the judiciary or bureaucracy) than the mode of delegation (vertical vs. horizontal) which shapes the relationship between the policymaker and the institution implementing it.
Abstract: The article compares the strategies through which Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Indonesia have regulated religion and addressed questions of what constitutes “the religious” in the post-independence period. We show that the dominant approach pursued by the Indian state has been one of judicialization, i.e. the delegation of religious questions to the high courts, while in Indonesia it has predominantly been one of bureaucratization, i.e. the regulation of religious affairs through the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Contrary to the expectation that judicialization devitalizes normative conflicts while bureaucratization, more frequently associated with authoritarian politics, just “locks” these conflicts “in,” we show that these expectations have not materialized; indeed, at times, the effects have been reverse. Engaging the literatures on judicialization and on bureaucratization, we argue that what determines the consequences of the policy toward religion is less the choice of the implementing institution (i.e. the judiciary or bureaucracy) than the mode of delegation (vertical vs. horizontal) which shapes the relationship between the policy-maker and the institution implementing it. Bureaucrats, judges and elected politicians in multicultural societies around the world encounter questions of religious nature very similar to those that authorities in India and Indonesia tackle. How they respond to questions of religion and address the challenge of religious heterogeneity has a profound impact on prospects of nation-building and democratization. It is therefore imperative that the consequences of the policy towards religion and even more so the consequences of political delegation be studied more systematically. This includes how outcomes are shaped by the relationship between policy-making and -implementing authority – a relationship that this article shows may be harder to steer for democratic governments than autocratic ones.
Journal Article•
TL;DR: Clinicians in practices that increased EHR use and delegated EHR tasks were more productive, but practice size determined whether the 2 strategies were complements or substitutes.
Abstract: OBJECTIVES To examine the impact of the degree of electronic health record (EHR) use and delegation of EHR tasks on clinician productivity in ambulatory settings. STUDY DESIGN We examined EHR use in primary care practices that implemented a web-based EHR from athenahealth (n = 42) over 3 years (695 practice-month observations). Practices were predominantly small and spread throughout the country. Data came from athenahealth practice management system and EHR task logs. METHODS We developed monthly measures of EHR use and delegation to support staff from task logs. Productivity was measured using work relative value units (RVUs). Using fixed effects models, we assessed the independent impacts on productivity of EHR use and delegation. We then explored the interaction between these 2 strategies and the role of practice size. RESULTS Greater EHR use and greater delegation were independently associated with higher levels of productivity. An increase in EHR use of 1 standard deviation resulted in a 5.3% increase in RVUs per clinician workday; an increase in delegation of EHR tasks of 1 standard deviation resulted in an 11.0% increase in RVUs per clinician workday (P <.05 for both). Further, EHR use and delegation had a positive joint impact on productivity in large practices (coefficient, 0.058; P <.05), but a negative joint impact on productivity in small practices (coefficient, -0.142; P <.01). CONCLUSIONS Clinicians in practices that increased EHR use and delegated EHR tasks were more productive, but practice size determined whether the 2 strategies were complements or substitutes.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors compare different forms of power delegation at the national and international levels, and argue that the institutional design of delegation contract and oversight mechanisms has an impact on the extent of agency slack.
Abstract: There has been considerable debate about the delegation of power to international organizations, but few studies compare national public administrations with international organizations. In the meantime, international and national bureaucrats are important actors in world politics since they represent states in the international arena. Sometimes executive agents attempt to bypass control by member states and to overreach their delegated authority (agency slack), while at other times they do not. How and under what conditions do agents engage in slack? To answer this question, the article builds on principal–agent theories by comparing different forms of power delegation at the national and international levels. It argues that the institutional design of delegation contract and oversight mechanisms have an impact on the extent of agency slack. In developing this argument, it compares the delegation of power from the legislature (the US Congress) to a national public administration (the United Stat...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze the effects of the observed increased share of delegated capital for trading strategies and equilibrium prices by introducing financial intermediaries into a standard Lucas exchange economy, where some investors trade on their own account, but others decide to delegate trading to professional fund managers.
Abstract: We analyze the effects of the observed increased share of delegated capital for trading strategies and equilibrium prices by introducing delegation into a standard Lucas exchange economy. In equilibrium, some investors trade on their own account, but others decide to delegate trading to professional fund managers. Flow-performance incentive functions describe how much capital clients provide to funds at each date as a function of past performance. Convex flow-performance relations imply that the average fund outperforms the market in recessions and underperforms in expansions. When the share of capital that is delegated is low, all funds follow the same strategy. However, when the equilibrium share of delegated capital is high, funds with identical incentives employ heterogeneous trading strategies. A group of managers borrows to take on a levered position on the stock. Thus, fund returns are dispersed in the cross-section and the outstanding amounts of borrowing and lending increase. The relation between the share of delegated capital and the Sharpe ratio typically follows an inverse U-shaped pattern. (JEL G11, G12, G23, D02, D81) Over the past thirty years, there has been a gradual but profound change in the way money is invested in financial markets.While almost 50% of U.S. equities were held directly in 1980, by 2007 this proportion decreased to approximately 20% (see French 2008). What are the equilibrium implications of this shift? In particular, how does the increased presence of delegation affect trading strategies and prices? To analyze the link between the incentives of financial institutions and asset prices, we introduce financial intermediaries into a Lucas exchange economy. Rather than study an optimal contracting problem, we rely on empirical regularities inflows and assume a convex relation betweenflows and performance relative to the market, as documented, for example, in Chevalier and Ellison (1997).
TL;DR: This work demonstrates relatively efficient and general solutions where the client delegates the computation to several servers, and is guaranteed to determine the correct answer as long as even a single server is honest.
Abstract: Consider a weak client that wishes to delegate a computation to an untrusted server, and then verify the correctness of the result. When the client uses only a single untrusted server, current techniques suffer from disadvantages such as computational inefficiency for the client or the server, limited functionality, or high round complexity. We demonstrate relatively efficient and general solutions where the client delegates the computation to several servers, and is guaranteed to determine the correct answer as long as even a single server is honest. We call such protocols Refereed Delegation of Computation (RDoC) and show: 1. A computationally secure protocol for any efficiently computable function , with logarithmically many rounds, based on any collision-resistant hash family. In our description of this protocol, we model the computation as running on a Turing Machine, but the protocol can be adapted to other computation models. We present an adaptation for the X86 computation model and a prototype implementation, called Quin, for Windows executables. We describe the architecture of Quin and experiment with several parameters on live cloud servers. We show that the protocol is practical, can work with real-world cloud servers, and is efficient for both the servers and for the client. 2. A 1-round statistically secure protocol for any log-space uniform NC circuit. In contrast, in the single server setting all known one-round delegation protocols are computationally sound. The protocol extends the arithemetization techniques of Goldwasser, Kalai and Rothblum (STOC 08) and Feige and Kilian (STOC 97).
TL;DR: In this article, the authors study the effects of delegating control of sovereign debt issuance to an independent authority in a monetary union where public spending decisions are decentralized, assuming that no policy makers are capable of commitment to a rule and that an institution may be designed to have a strong preference for achieving some clear, simple, quantitative policy goal.
Abstract: This paper studies the effects of delegating control of sovereign debt issuance to an independent authority in a monetary union where public spending decisions are decentralized. The model assumes that no policy makers are capable of commitment to a rule. However, consistent with Rogoff (1985) and with the recent history of central banking, it assumes that an institution may be designed to have a strong preference for achieving some clear, simple, quantitative policy goal.Following Beetsma and Bovenberg (1999), we show that in a monetary union where a single central bank interacts with many member governments, debt is excessive relative to a social planner’s solution. We extend their analysis by considering the establishment of an independent fi scal authority (IFA) mandated to maintain long-run budget balance. We show that delegating sovereign debt issuance to an IFA in each member state shifts down the time path of debt, because this eliminates aspects of deficit bias inherent in democratic politics. Delegating to a single IFA at the union level lowers debt further, because common pool problems across regions’ deficit choices are internalized.The establishment of a federal government with fiscal powers over the whole monetary union would be less likely to avoid excessive deficits, because only the second mechanism mentioned above would apply. Moreover, the effective level of public services would be lower, if centralized spending decisions are less informationally efficient.
TL;DR: The authors argued that the epistemic geographies of boundary spaces can reveal the heterogeneous processes of ordering at what is commonly referred to as the'science-policy interface' in the context of climate change.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined whether the impact of budgetary institutions on budget deficits is conditioned by political fragmentation (i.e., ideological differences among parties in government) and size fragmentation (e.g., the effective number of parties in the government or the number of spending ministers).
Abstract: We analyze how budgetary institutions affect government budget deficits in member states of the European Union during 1984–2003 employing new indicators provided by Hallerberg et al. (2009). Using panel fixed effects models, we examine whether the impact of budgetary institutions on budget deficits is conditioned by political fragmentation (i.e., ideological differences among parties in government) and size fragmentation (i.e., the effective number of parties in government or the number of spending ministers). Our results suggest that strong budgetary institutions, no matter whether they are based on delegation to a strong minister of finance or on fiscal contracts, reduce the deficit bias in case of strong ideological fragmentation. In contrast, the impact of budgetary institutions is not conditioned by size fragmentation.
Book•
29 Aug 2013
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a list of tables and figures for the European Union Security and Defense Council (ESDC) with a focus on the following: 1. Delegation and Agency in International Relations 2. International Organization for Migration 3. Institutional development in EU Security and Defence 4. Policy-making in EU security and Defense 5. Military Operation in Bosnia 6. Monitoring mission in Aceh 7. Military operation in Chad 8. Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo 9. Conclusion Notes References Index
Abstract: List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations 1. Introduction 2. Delegation and Agency in International Relations 3. Institutional Development in EU Security and Defense 4. Policy-Making in EU Security and Defense 5. Military Operation in Bosnia 6. Monitoring Mission in Aceh 7. Military Operation in Chad 8. Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo 9. Conclusion Notes References Index
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate strategic interactions and market outcomes in the "agency model" and "wholesale model" of sales, and relate their results to events in the market for electronic books.
Abstract: I investigate strategic interactions and market outcomes in the "agency model" and "wholesale model" of sales. Adopting the agency model initially raises prices, and can (but need not) raise the profits of rival retailers. Nonetheless, consumers prefer the agency model. I relate my results to events in the market for electronic books.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors survey the recent literature on the political economy of the formation of international environmental agreements and find that the basic theoretical framework for the analysis of agreement formation is largely unrelated to empirical approaches.
Abstract: This paper surveys the recent literature on the political economy of the formation of international environmental agreements. The survey covers theoretical modelling approaches and empirical studies including experimental work. Central to our survey is the question how the political process impacts different stages of agreement formation and stability. We distinguish the rules defined during pre-negotiations that govern negotiations, ratification and implementation. Strategic delegation and lobbying are directly relevant during the negotiation and ratification phases. Implementation, the choice of policy instruments at the national level, will also be impacted by lobbying and indirectly influence negotiations. We find that the basic theoretical framework for the analysis of international environmental agreements is largely unrelated to empirical approaches. Furthermore, we observe that models of the political process of agreement formation, like for example sequential game models, are yet to be developed.