IN his classic novel, "Catch-22" (1961), Joseph Heller describes a thoroughly frustrating situation faced by a combat pilot in World War II. This is generalized to a "generic" 2x2 strict ordinal game, in which whatever strategy the column player chooses, the best response of the row player is to...

This paper focuses on the fair division of a set of indivisible items between two people when both have the same linear preference order on the items but may have different preferences over subsets of items. Surprisingly, divisions that are envy-free, Pareto-optimal, and ensure that the less...

It is well-known that non-cooperative and cooperative game theory may yield different solutions to games. These differences are particularly dramatic in the case of truels, or three-person duels, in which the players may fire sequentially or simultaneously, and the games may be one-round or...

One of the most elusive ingredients in the success of a deal is what deal makers euphemistically refer to as "Social issues" - how power, position, and status will be allocated among the merging companies' executives. A failure to resolve these issues often leads to the destruction of...

In this paper we analyze recent trends in aggregate property crime rates in the United States. We propose a dynamic equilibrium model which guides our quantitative investigation of the major determinants of observed patterns of crime. Our main findings can be summarized as follows. First, the...

Sellers are typically better about product quality and sales practices than are purchasers, and might be tempted to exploit their superior knowledge to deceive buyers. Firms themselves, buyers, and third-parties attempt to level the playing field with a variety of confidence-building measures,...