Investment Criteria in Single and Multi-Member Economic Organizations

This paper compares the determination of investment criteriain single- and multi-member organizations. Individualdecisional skills are assumed to be endogenous variables thatdepend on the investment criteria. Our main result specifiesthe condition that determines the relationship between theinvestment criteria in single- and multi-member organizations,given the size of the multi-member organization, the decisionrule it applies and the function relating the individual'sdecisional skills to the investment criterion. Theimplications of our main result are developed for specialorganizations such as hierarchies and polyarchies. Ouranalysis implies that the criteria in a multi-memberorganization may be stricter than the criteria set in asingle-member organization, even though in the former case theorganization may worsen the average decision-making ability ofits members. The analysis can be applied not only in singleand multi-member decision making settings, but also in somecontexts of centralized and decentralized decisions. This isillustrated in the case of decisions by editors ofprofessional journals regarding the acceptance or rejection ofsubmitted papers.     

Efforts in two-sided contests

The degree of rent dissipation is studied in extended two-sided contests that involve two types of efforts. While usual contestants expend resources in trying to win the contested prize, potential recipients of the rent-seeking efforts also participate in the contest. This is due to uncertainty regarding the source of power in the contest that induces the bureaucrats to expend resources to increase their share in the rent-seeking efforts by trying to appear as the party controlling the allocation of the prize. We show that the existing theoretical and empirical studies are incomplete and may underestimate the extent of rent dissipation.     

Performance and prize decomposition in contests

This paper focuses on the effect of additive contest decomposition on performance: winning probabilities and efforts of the contestants. Our main result provides a sufficient condition for invariance of contest performance to the decomposition of a contest, when the sum of the possibly differently valued prizes in the segmented contests is equal to the value of the prize in the original grand contest and the relative prizes in the sub-contests are equal for every contestant. It is shown that this condition is satisfied by the commonly used exponential logistic contest success functions. With these functions the contest designer does not have an incentive to split the prize and create additive, segmented sub-contests. We then prove that when the additive contest decomposition is asymmetric, contest decomposition may adversely affect the designer; that it, reduce the total efforts of the contestants.     

Sandler, Freedman and Telhami: Religion in Israeli Politics The Religious-Secular Divide in Israeli Politics

The following is the edited text of a Sadat Forum held at the Brookings Institution on February 23, 1999. The cosponsors are the Brookings Foreign Policy Program and the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland.     

The Impact of Immigration on the Internal Processes and Developmental Tasks of Emerging Adulthood

This study examines the experience of emerging adult immigrants, a group simultaneously attempting to navigate the developmental period of exploration and experimentation of emerging adulthood, together with the need for re-organization of the self, following immigration. In this study, in-depth interviews were conducted, with 41 emerging adult immigrants from the former Soviet Union in Israel and 42 non-immigrant Israeli emerging adults (all in the age group 21–25), on the subjects of sense of self, family relations, and age-appropriate tasks of emerging adulthood. Results showed that while immigrant emerging adults had a more disorganized sense of self, they also showed higher levels of both autonomy and relatedness in the relationship with their parents. Immigrant emerging adults had fewer social networks, yet more intimate relationships. Emerging adult immigrants' story was one of “relatedness” where level of self-organization was related to closeness, caring, and identification with parents, and closeness in both social and intimate relationships. In contrast, the non-immigrant emerging adults told about a process of “autonomy seeking” where a consolidated sense of self was related to more independent decision-making, emotional independence, and assertiveness in the relationship with parents. The findings of this study point to the complex and unique process that emerging adult immigrants undergo while coping with developmental tasks in their new environment. Received Ph.D. from Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. Current research interests in emerging adulthood and immigration. Main foci of research are developmental processes and adaptation in adolescence and emerging adulthood. Received Ph.D. from Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. Current research interests concern emerging adulthood and adaptation. Received Ph.D. from Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. Current research interests in emerging adulthood and schizophrenia.     

Sanctions and Democracy

How do economic sanctions affect democratization, and should the former be used to promote the latter? Imposing economic pain on large swaths of an already vulnerable population in order to nudge democratic change poses thorny issues. Does it work, in terms of securing democratic outcomes? Even if it did, is this way of achieving change justifiable? We explore the connections between the normative and positive sides of the argument for sanctions in light of theoretical and normative progress in two decades of post-Cold War research on democracy. We argue that some sanctions policies used under specific conditions are more justifiable, but there are other sanctions policies that are less justifiable.     

Who’s afraid of a world state? A global sovereign and the statist-cosmopolitan debate

Wary of quick statist dismissal of their proposals, cosmopolitans have been careful not to associate themselves with a world state. I argue that this caution is mistaken: cosmopolitans should see the vision of a world state as strategically valuable in exposing weaknesses in statist accounts, particularly of the Rawlsian variety. This strategic value follows if the only cogent arguments against a world state belong to non-ideal theory which assumes non-compliance, rather than to ideal theory with its core assumption of full compliance. If our only convincing reasons to reject a world state are non-ideal, then any liberal theory revolving around separate states must itself be considered a non-ideal theory. As a non-ideal theory, a statist law of peoples cannot be presented as an end-state, but is rather a transitional stage. Yet once seen as a transitional theory, the statist “realistic utopia” can no longer dodge the cosmopolitan charge that it is neither sufficiently realistic nor sufficiently utopian.