Issue by issue legislative bargaining (joint with Monica A. Giovanniello and Clara Ponsatí).

In this paper, we study the disjunctive facing the members of a committee with risk-averse agents when deciding between conducting negotiations issue-by-issue or by bundling issues. While in unanimity regimes bundling issues is preferred when agents are sufficiently patient, we show that under simple majority, the inherent risk of being excluded from a winning coalition makes issue-by-issue the preferred regime as far as the inefficiencies generated by the impossibility of inter-issue compensation are not too high. 

Buying from the fringe (too) (joint with Lluís Bru and József Sákovics)

We analyze how to divide the requirements of a (public) firm into lots, when potential suppliers su¤er from heterogeneous diseconomies of scale. The optimal design leads to all firms, included the disadvantaged competitors, the fringe, being active, despite the concomitant cost of increasing supplier profit. Setting large lots that only large firms can produce competitively is necessary; but also setting small lots that the fringe firms can competitively bid for, reduces procurement cost. If, in addition, some medium-sized lots are set aside for the fringe –as allowed by the US regulations, but not by the EU ones –procurement cost is further reduced

Two-level lobbying and policy gridlock (joint with Jenny C. de Freitas and Antoni Rubí Barceló). 

In this study, we model a two-stage contest to examine the strategic behavior of two opposing interest groups who may influence a public policy at two different stages, say the formulation of an alternative to the status quo and the approval stage. We characterize the equilibria and study the interest groups's incentives to invest in one stage or the other. We examine the circumstances under which the status quo is never replaced.