Shelling (1960) among others have argued that contributions to public goods may be larger if people spread their contributions and give one small contribution at a time. Examining a threshold public good environment, Marx and Matthews (2000) show that multiple rounds may secure a provision level...

Many commodities are such that the utility they create for individual consumers depends positively on the number of people also consuming these goods. Prominent examples among others are mobile phones, game consoles, and computer software. The customers form a network, where the size of the...

Despite sustained efforts of equal opportunities for men and women, large gender differences prevail in competitive high ranking positions. Possible explanations include discrimination, differences in human capital and preferences, which overall may make women less effective in competitive...

In an attempt to reduce the liability insurance costs of firms, several US states have implemented many different kinds of tort reform. Some reforms take the form of caps or limits on punitive damage awards while others, called “split-awardsâ€, have mandated that a proportion of the...

In this paper we characterize the optimal allocation mechanism for $N$ objects, (permits), to $I$ potential buyers, (firms). Firms' payoffs depend on their costs, the costs of competitors and on the final allocation of the permits, allowing for externalities, substitutabilities and...

We investigate the issue of implementation via individually rational ex-post budget-balanced Bayesian mechanisms. We demonstrate that all social choice rules that generate a nonnegative ex-ante surplus, including ex-post efficient ones, can generically be implemented via such mechanisms. The...

Wilson (1987) criticizes the existing literature of game theory as relying too much on common-knowledge assumptions. In reaction to Wilson's critique, the recent literature of mechanism design has started to employ stronger solution concepts such as dominant strategy incentive compatibility, and...

In its standard “public choice” form, the mechanism-design framework abstracts from institutional and technological constraints beyond those that the modeler can represent in the definition of states, outcomes, and preferences. This abstraction can create a useful simplification. However,...