We study an economy where a collection of indivisible goods are sold to a set of buyers who want to buy at most one good.We characterize the set of Walrasian equilibrium price vectors in such an economy using sets of overdemanded and underdemanded goods.Further, we give characterizations for the...

This paper analyzes the problem of selling a number of indivisible items to a set of unitdemand bidders. An ascending auction mechanism called the Excess Demand Ascending Auction (EDAA) is defined. The main results demonstrate that EDAA terminates in a finite number of iterations and that the...

It has long been known that in economies with satiation, the set of competitive equilibria does not coincide with the limiting core of an economy. Competitive equilibria may fail to exist because satiated agents may choose their optimal consumption bundles in the interiors of their budget sets,...

"Hyperbolic discount functions are characterized by a relatively high discount rate over short horizons and a relatively low discount rate over long horizons" (Laibson 1997).We suggest two cognitive procedures where individuals perceive future utility as decreasing at a decreasing rate as a...

We study the optimal design of liability schemes (at the corporate or individual level) when the objective is to deter socially harmful corporate behavior without discouraging productivity enhancements. We assume that firms face agency problems between shareholders and managers (moral hazard)...

A large literature showed that small firms experience difficulties in accessing the credit market due to informational asymmetries; these may be mitigated by collateral or relationship lending, possibilities often precluded to small business. We investigate the effect on small business finance...

Collateral is one of the most important features of a debt contract. A substantial theoretical literature motivates the use of collateral as a means to alleviate ex-ante and ex-post information asymmetries between borrowers and lenders and the incidence of credit rationing. Through its seniority...