We analyse the effect of the voluntary adoption of a living wage on firms operating in product markets in which consumption behaviour is at least partly determined by reputational concerns for ethical firm behaviour. We show without recourse to morality or efficiency-wage theories that the...

This note analyzes the problem Captain MacWhirr faces in Joseph Conrad’s novel Typhoon as an implementation problem under incomplete information. We identify a sufficient condition under which each player has a unique rationalizable strategy. In this unique rationalizable outcome, truthful...

We study decision making processes with non-standard all-pay structures. In our first group of applications, individual members of some institution—due to public pressure or expectation—propose reductions of their own income, e.g., corporate board members reducing their bonus payments in an...

We study the role of information exchange, leadership and coordination in team or partnership structures. For this purpose, we view individuals jointly engaging in productive processes -- a 'team' -- as endowed with individual and privately held information on the joint production process. Once...

We attempt to answer a simple empirical question: does having children make a parent live longer? The hypothesis we offer is that a parent's immune system is refreshed by a child's infections at a time when their own protection starts wearing thin. With the boosted immune system, the parent has...

We analyse a procurement auction in which sellers are distinguished on the basis of the ratios of quality per unit of money they offer. Sellers are privately informed on the quality of the technology or good they offer. We assume that the procurer cannot perfectly identify the best offer. Thus,...

We consider implementation problems under incomplete information without incentive compatibility. If the social choice functions do not satisfy incentive compatibility, full implementation is unattainable via the existing approaches. By focusing on the actual problems from Typhoon by Joseph...

We develop the idea of using mean-variance preferences for the analysis of the first-price, all-pay auction. On the bidding side, we characterise the optimal strategy in symmetric allpay auctions under mean-variance preferences for general distributions of valuations and any number of bidders....

We study the incentives of noncooperative players to play a cooperative game. That is, we look for individually rational, redistributive, pre-game agreements enacted in order to coordinate towards efficient equilibrium play. Contrasting with standard Nash equilibrium analysis, we assume that...