We allow a contest organizer to bias a contest in a discriminatory way, that is, she can favor specific contestants through the choice of contest success functions in order to maximize total equilibrium effort (resp. revenue). The scope for revenue enhancement through biasing is analyzed and...

We investigate learning and the development of the capability to backward induct in children and young adults aged 6 to 23 under controlled laboratory conditions. The experimental design employs a modified version of the race game. As in the original game (see Burks et al., 2009, Dufwenberg et...

We propose a spatial competition model to study banks’ strategic responses to the asymmetric Spanish geographic deregulation process. We find that once the geographic deregulation process finishes, inter-regional mergers between savings banks are optimal whenever the economies of scale...

We develop a competitive equilibrium theory of a market for votes. Before voting on a binary issue, individuals may buy and sell their votes with each other. We define the concept of ex ante vote-trading equilibrium, and show by construction that an equilibrium exists. The equilibriumwe...

The theory of games against nature relies on complete preferences among all conceivable acts (case 1). Aumann and Drèze (Am Econ J Microecon 1(1):116,(2009) consider situations where preferences are defined only for a given set of acts (case 2).We extend these results to situations where (i)...

Quasilinear preferences on a public good and a numeraire good are limits of preferences where both goods are normal. The set of equilibria of the voluntary contribution (or private provision) game is easily characterized under quasilinearity by: top valuators aggregately contribute their common...

Restricting attention to economic environments, we study implementation under perturbed better-response dynamics (BRD). A social choice function (SCF) is implementable in stochastically stable strategies of perturbed BRD whenever the only outcome supported by the stochastically stable strategies...

A high court has to decide whether a lawis constitutional, unconstitutional, or interpretable. The voting system is runoff. Runoff voting systems can be interpreted both, as social choice functions or as mechanisms. It is known that, for universal domains of preferences, runoff voting systems...

This experiment investigates decisions made by prospective economists and physicians in an allocation problem which can be framed either medically or neutrally. The potential recipients differ with respect to their minimum needs as well as to how much they benefit from a treatment. We classify...

If two players of a simultaneous symmetric one-shot prisoner's dilemma hold standard prefer-ences, the fact that choosing the cooperative move imposes harm on a passive outsider is imma-terial. Yet if participants hold social preferences, one might think that they are reticent to impose harm on...