Randomized dictatorship,” one of the simplest ways to solve bargaining situations, works as follows: a fair coin toss determines the “dictator”—the player to be given his first-best payoff. The two major bargaining solutions, that of Nash (1950) and that of Kalai and Smorodinsky (1975), Pareto-dominate this process. However, whereas the existing literature offers axiomatizations of the Nash sol...

At the University of Pisa, where he studied law, Buonarroti had been acquainted with the 18th century social philosophers especially Helvetius, Mably, Rousseau and Morelly, who had moulded his social and political ideology. When the French Revolution broke out he was among the most courageous protagonists to defend its ideas: "J'attendais depuis longtemps le signal, il fut donne". In October 17...

Suppose X is a uniformly distributed n-dimensional binary vector and Y is obtained by passing X through a binary symmetric channel with crossover probability α. A recent conjecture by Courtade and Kumar postulates that I(f(X);Y ) ≤ 1− h(α) for any Boolean function f . In this paper, we prove the conjecture for all α ∈ [0, αn], and under the restriction to balanced functions, also for all α ∈ [1...

The Soviet communist regime had devastating consequences on the state of Russian twentieth century science. Country Communist leaders promoted Trofim Lysenko--an agronomist and keen supporter of the inheritance of acquired characters--and the Soviet government imposed a complete ban on the practice and teaching of genetics, which it condemned as a "bourgeois perversion". Russian science, which ...

To what extent was the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL) able to serve as an instance legitimization military dictatorship established in Brazil after 1964 coup? This article aims examine a specific aspect daily life this institution during dictatorship: investiture ceremonies. We believe that approach allows us analyze how politics could operate “apolitically” within ABL. argue ceremonies may...

∗ Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 50 Memorial Drive, MA02139. e-mail: [email protected]. † Department of Political Science and Department of Economics, University of California at Berkeley, 210 Barrows Hall, Berkeley, CA94720. e-mail: [email protected].

A model of governance implies that democracies provide public goods at different levels than dictatorships. Systems of governance are characterized by inclusiveness—the degree to which public good decisions reflect the interests of all citizens versus an elite subset. The theory indicates that less inclusive (autocratic) governments will under-provide public consumption goods relative to more i...