This paper shows that an asymmetric group debt contract, where one borrower co-signs for another, but not vice versa, leads to heterogeneous matching. The analysis suggests that micro finance organizations can achieve the first best by offering asymmetric group contracts.

We investigate a two-part tariff licensing contract that enables an incumbent innovator to license the technology for a new product to a potential rival, who may alternatively develop a compatible technology for an imperfectly substitutable product. We identify the optimal two-part tariff...

We demonstrate that the Varian (1980) model of sales has a unique Nash equilibrium when firms incur costly advertising to compete for informed consumers. The equilibrium is symmetric. In particular, with costly advertising, the asymmetric equilibria highlighted by Baye et al. (1992) do not arise.

According to Kim and Lee (1997), property taxes as opposed to capital gain taxes and taxes on rent endanger dynamic efficiency. The present paper shows that the choice of the tax base is immaterial. What counts is whether the taxes eliminate the after-tax rent. Empirical evidence suggests that...

Since Thaler (1981), we have lived with the uncomfortable stylized fact that many humans choose strictly dominated actions in intertemporal choice experiments. We designed an experiment to probe the reasons for the apparently suboptimal behavior, and we find that the classic Fisher (1930)...

We use a multiple price list approach with real payments to elicit long-term time preferences on a sample of French farmers. Elicited individual discount rates vary with the time delay, which supports the existence of a reversal effect in long-term time preferences, and increase with rewards,...

This paper investigates the relationship between economic growth and a fully funded social security system in an overlapping generations model with family altruism. It is shown that funded social security may harm growth if there are operative bequests within the family.

We consider procedures that use randomness to make a decision that involves several individuals. We asked subjects to compare the fairness of six pairs of seemingly equivalent procedures. We propose a classification of subjects into two categories: those who are “emotional” in the sense...

We study exchanges between three overlapping generations with non-dynastic altruism. The middleaged choose informal care provided to their parents and education expenditures for their children. The young enjoy their education, while the old may leave a bequest to their children. Within each...

It is shown that rent-seeking contests with continuous and independent type distributions possess a unique pure-strategy Nash equilibrium.