For groups that must make several decisions of similar form, we define a simple and general mechanism that is designed to promote social efficiency. The mechanism links the various decisions by forcing agents to budget their representations of preferences so that the frequency of preferences...

We study Bayesian mechanism design in situations where agents' information may be multi-dimensional, concentrating on mechanisms that lead to efficient allocations. Our main result is that a generalization of the well-known Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism maximizes the planner's "revenue'' among...

Limited liability debt financing of irreversible investments can affect investment timing through an entrepreneur's option value, even after compensating a lender for expected default losses. This non-neutrality of debt arises from an entrepreneur's unique investment opportunity, and it is shown...

This paper analyzes an agent¡¯s option exercise decision under uncertainty. The agent decides whether and when to do an irreversible activity. He is tempted by immediate gratification and suffers from self-control problems. This paper adopts the Gul and Pensendorfer self- control utility...

Die Studie „Wertschaffendes Umweltmanagement“ betrachtet den Zusammenhang zwischen Umweltaspekten und Unternehmenswert. Hierbei bezieht sie erstmals zwei unterschiedliche, sich ergänzende Bewertungsverfahren ein: Sie nimmt erstens das Konzept des Environmental Shareholder Value auf und...

The role that Bernanke’s Bad News Principle plays in the modern theory of investment under uncertainty is analyzed. The analysis shows that the actual investment dilemma is that by delaying investment firms trade off a higher present value of earnings for a lower present value of the...

Agent-based computational economics (ACE) is the computational study of economies modeled as evolving systems of autonomous interacting agents. Starting from initial conditions, specified by the modeler, the computational economy evolves over time as its constituent agents repeatedly interact...

This study examines bidder preferences between alternative auction institutions. We seek to experimentally characterize the degree to which bidders prefer an ascending auction to a sealed bid auction. We find very strong ceteris paribus preferences for the ascending institution with bidders...

We characterize the outcomes of games when players may make binding offers of strategy contingent side payments before the game is played. This does not always lead to efficient outcomes, despite complete information and costless contracting. The characterizations are illustrated in a series of...

This is an Invited paper for the World Congress of the Econometric Society held in Seattle in August 2000. We discuss the strong connections between auction theory and "standard" economic theory, and argue that auction-theoretic tools and intuitions can provide useful arguments and insights in a...