Consider a contest for a prize in which each player knows his/her own ability, but may or may not know those of his/her rivals (the complete or incomplete information regimes). Our main result is that, if the value of the prize is high, more effort and output are engendered under incomplete...

The introduction and widespread use of credit cards increases trading efficiency but, by also increasing the velocity of money, it causes inflation, in the absence of monetary intervention. If the monetary authority attempts to restore pre-credit card price levels by reducing the money supply,...

We show that intermediate goods can be sourced to firms on the "outside" (that do not compete in the final product market), even when there are no economies of scale or cost advantages for these firms. What drives the phenomenon is that "inside" firms, by accepting such orders, incur the...

We examine the axiomatic basis of the Shapley value when applied to the problem of allocating the cost of a runway among different-sized users. Our approach is to begin with a model of airport-problems and then to list---within the model---certain natural properties which an allocation ought to...

We introduce grading into games of status. Each player chooses effort, producing a stochastic output or score. Utilities depend on the ranking of all the scores. By clustering scores into grades, the ranking is coarsened, and the incentives to work are changed. We apply games of status to...