A menu description presents a mechanism to player i in two steps. Step (1) uses the reports of other players to describe i's menu: the set of i's potential outcomes. Step (2) uses i's report to select i's favorite outcome from her menu. Can menu descriptions better expose strategyproofness,...

In order to quantify these effects, we develop a computational general equilibrium model. We feed this multi-country overlapping generations model with detailed long-term demographic projections for seven world regions. Our simulations indicate that capital flows from fast-aging regions to the...

About 20% of German workers retire on disability pensions. Disability pensions provide fairly generous benefits for those who are not already age-eligible for an old-age pension and who are deemed unable to work for health reasons. In this paper, we use two sets of individual survey data to...

In this paper, we examine the empirical implications of reputation formation using a game-theoretic model of intra-familial interactions. We consider parental reputation in repeated two-stage games in which daughters' decision to have a child as a teenager and the willingness of parents to...

To what extent must nations cede control over their economic and social policies if global efficiency is to be achieved in an interdependent world? This question is at the center of the debate over the future role of GATT (and its successor, the WTO) in the realm of labor and environmental...

Open borders imply systems competition. This paper studies the implications of systems competition for the national competition rules. It is shown that an equilibrium where all countries retain their antitrust laws does not exist, since abolishing this law makes it possible for a single country...

Committees improve decisions by pooling independent information of members, but promote manipulation, obfuscation, and exaggeration of private evidence when members have conflicting preferences. We study how self-interest mediates these conflicting forces. When members' preferences differ, no...

In an environment in which bureaucratic burden and delay are exogenous, an individual firm may find bribes helpful to reduce the effective red tape it faces. The efficient grease' hypothesis asserts therefore that corruption can improve economic efficiency and that fighting bribery would be...

Trade negotiations occur through time and between the governments of many countries. An important issue is thus whether the value of concessions that a government wins in a current negotiation may be eroded in a future bilateral negotiation to which it is not party. In the absence of rules that...