This paper identifies the maximal domain of transferable utility games on which aggregate monotonicity (no player is worse off when the worth of the grand coalition increases) and egalitarian core selection (no other core allocation can be obtained by a transfer from a richer to a poorer player) are compatible, which turns out to be the class of games where the procedural egalitarian solution selects

We provide an evolutionary explanation for the well-established evidence of the existence of in-group favoritism in intergroup conflict. Using a model of group contest for a (local) public good, we show that the larger the number of groups competing against one another, or the larger the degree of complementarity between individual efforts, the more likely are group members altruistic towards their

Boston Mechanism (BM) and Deferred Acceptance (DA) are two competing algorithms in school choice. BM is manipulable whereas DA encourages truth-telling. Recognizing heterogeneous sophistication of students, we use the level-k model to analyze students' strategies under BM in a complete information environment with strict school priorities. Because students tend to manipulate first choice under BM,

We run experiments on second price auctions with resale opportunities, where a zero-value bidder, called a speculator, is commonly known to exist. Garratt and Tröger (2006) show that there is a continuum of speculative equilibria, apart from the standard bid-your-value one, in which the speculator gets the good in the first stage auction with a positive probability. She pays a price of zero and resells

Consider a monopolist selling n items to an additive buyer whose item values are drawn from independent distributions F1,F2,…,Fn possibly having unbounded support. Unlike in the single-item case, it is well known that the revenue-optimal selling mechanism (a pricing scheme) may be complex, sometimes requiring a continuum of menu entries. Also known is that simple mechanisms with a bounded number of

We experimentally investigate people's willingness to intervene in others' decision-making in order to promote a charitable donation. We find that only a minority of those subjects who would donate themselves enforce the donation by banning the selfish choice from the decision-maker's choice menu. Bans are more acceptable if they are implemented only after the decision-makers could choose between the

This paper studies the design of position auctions when bidders have multi-unit demands for advertising positions. I propose an ascending clock auction with two stages: allocation stage and assignment stage. The allocation stage determines the quantity of positions assigned to each advertiser using a generalized version of the Ausubel (2004) auction under the context of differentiated items. The assignment

The paper characterizes the optimal (revenue-maximizing) mechanism for allocating a good to buyers who face asymmetric budget constraints. The optimal mechanism belongs to one of two classes. When the budget differences between the buyers are small, the mechanism discriminates only between high-valuation types for whom the budget constraint is binding. All low valuations buyers are treated symmetrically

Many decisions taken in legislatures or committees are subject to lobbying efforts. A seminal contribution to the literature on vote-buying is the legislative-lobbying model pioneered by Groseclose and Snyder (1996), which predicts that lobbies will optimally form supermajorities in many cases. Providing the first empirical assessment of this prominent model, we test its central predictions in the

This paper revisits Myerson and Satterthwaite's (1983) classic analysis of mechanism design for bilateral trading, replacing equilibrium with a level-k model of strategic thinking and focusing on direct mechanisms. The revelation principle fails for level-k models, so restricting attention to direct mechanisms and imposing incentive-compatibility are not without loss of generality. If, however, only

The concept of unprejudiced beliefs equilibrium is simple: out-of-equilibrium beliefs should be consistent with the principle that multiple deviations are infinitely less likely than single deviations. Our questions are: does there always exist such an equilibrium and what can be done if there are multiple such equilibria? To select a unique equilibrium, this notion is usually coupled with the intuitive

A (deterministic) social choice correspondence F, mapping states into outcomes, is rationalizably implementable provided that there exists a mechanism such that the support of its set of rationalizable outcomes coincides with the set of outcomes recommended by F. We provide a necessary condition for rationalizable implementation, called r-monotonicity. This condition, when combined with some other

In cooperative games, the coalition structure core is, despite its potential emptiness, one of the most popular solutions. While it is a fundamentally static concept, the consideration of a sequential extension of the underlying dominance correspondence gave rise to a selection of non-empty generalizations. Among these, the payoff-equivalence minimal dominant set and the myopic stable set are defined

Neoclassical economic theory assumes that whenever agents tackle dynamic decisions under ambiguity, preferences are represented by the Subjective Expected Utility (SEU) model and prior beliefs are updated according to Bayes rule, upon the arrival of partial information. Nevertheless, when one considers non-neutral ambiguity attitudes, either the axiom of dynamic consistency or of consequentialism should

An uninformed principal appoints a committee of experts to vote on a multi-attribute alternative, such as an interdisciplinary project. Each expert evaluates one attribute and is biased toward it (specialty bias). The principal values all attributes equally but has a status quo bias, reflecting the organizational cost of a change. We study whether the principal would compose the committee of more or

We generalize the famous Tarski result by showing that: if X is a complete lattice, and f:X→X is an increasing and continuous mapping, then for all points x0∈X, the limits of sequences (fn(lim⁡supk⁡fk(x0)))n=1∞ and (fn(lim⁡infk⁡fk(x0)))n=1∞ are fixed points of f. These limits are the tight fixed-point bounds between which sufficiently large iterations fk(x0) are located. We provide an application of

We present a characterization of the Luce rule in terms of positivity and a new choice axiom called odds supermodularity that strengthens the regularity axiom. This new characterization illuminates a connection that goes unnoticed, and sheds light on the behavioral underpinnings of the Luce rule and its extensions from a different perspective. We show that odds supermodularity per se characterizes

A monopoly sells a network good to a large population of consumers. We explore how the monopoly's profit and the consumer surplus vary with the arrival of public information about the network structure. The analysis reveals that, under homogeneous preferences for the good, degree assortativity ensures that information arrival increases both profit and consumer surplus. In contrast, heterogeneous preferences

This article studies a sequential search model in which consumers can purchase a product without incurring a search cost to inspect the match value, which we call “blind buying”. We show that the optimal search policy is no longer as per Weitzman (1979). When the match value has a symmetric distribution, both consumers and firms are indifferent to the search order, conditional on that blind buying

Economic inequality may fuel frustration, possibly leading to anger and antisocial behavior. We experimentally study a situation where only the rich can reduce inequality while the poor can express their discontent by destroying the wealth of a rich counterpart with whom they had no previous interaction. We test whether the emergence of antisocial behavior depends only on the level of inequality, or

This paper studies the optimal contract for a risk-neutral agency with limited liability. We introduce a novel formulation of the model, in which the contract design problem reduces to a problem of constructing the distribution function of a random variable. This formulation directly balances the principal's tradeoff between incentivizing the agent to exert proper effort and minimizing the cost of

Many negotiations involve risks that are resolved ex-post. Often these risks are not incurred equally by the parties involved. We experimentally investigate bargaining situations where a residual claimant faces ex-post risk, whereas a fixed-payoff player does not. Consistent with a benchmark model, we find that residual claimants extract a risk premium, which increases in risk exposure. This premium

We study the problem of stochastic stability for evolutionary dynamics under the logit choice rule. We consider general classes of coordination games, symmetric or asymmetric, with an arbitrary number of strategies, which satisfies the marginal bandwagon property (i.e., there is positive feedback to coordinate). Our main result is that the most likely evolutionary escape paths from a status quo convention

In this paper, we show that the right to determine the sequence of moves in a dynamic team tournament improves the chances of winning the contest. Because studying dynamic team tournaments – like R&D races – with interim feedback is difficult with company data, we examine decisions of highly paid professionals in soccer penalty shootouts and show that teams whose captains can decide about the shooting

Firms can donate a share of profits to charity as a form of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Recent experiments have found that such initiatives can induce higher effort by workers, generating benefits for both sides of the labour market. We design a novel version of the gift-exchange game to account for self-selection, and find that wages remain the most effective incentive to attract and motivate

We analyze a class of stochastic games where two lobbies compete by influencing the opinions in a society. We assume that the opinions evolve according to De Groot opinion formation and that the decisions of the lobbies change the structure of the network representing the society. We show that the regularity of discounted Nash equilibrium payoffs when players become patient is highly model-dependent

We theoretically and experimentally study the evolution of strategies reflecting different moral judgments under indirect reciprocity. We fully characterize the asymptotically stable sets of rest points. In all cooperative rest points multiple strategies coexist. This offers an explanation for the heterogeneity in moral judgments among humans. The behavior prescribed by the predicted strategies can

We propose a social learning model where agents choose who to communicate with based on the trade-off between collecting information and influencing others' actions. Like-minded people reveal more truthful information, but talking to someone different makes an agent more likely to influence another person's action, because like-minded people will take similar actions anyway. In our model agents start

In many domains, committees bargain over a sequence of policies and a policy remains in effect until a new agreement is reached. In this paper, I argue that, in order to assess the consequences of veto power, it is important to take into account this dynamic aspect. I analyze an infinitely repeated divide-the-dollar game with an endogenous status quo policy. I show that full appropriation by the veto

I consider the housing market problem with weak preferences. In this context, I provide a sufficient condition for weak group strategy proofness; no group of agents can jointly misreport their preferences such that each agent in the group becomes better-off. Using this sufficient condition, I prove that the top trading absorbing sets, top cycles, and highest priority object rules satisfy weak group

This paper presents a model of elections that explores the relationship between incumbent upsets and incumbents running unopposed. A valence-disadvantaged candidate (a potential challenger), who possesses private information about the extent of this disadvantage, first decides whether to challenge a valence-advantaged candidate (the incumbent). If the election is contested, the two candidates engage

This paper extends the exact equivalence result between the allocations realized by self-fulfilling mechanisms and rational expectations equilibrium allocations in Forges and Minelli (1997) to a large finite-agent replica economy where different replicas of the same agent are allowed to receive different private information. The first result states that the allocation realized by any incentive compatible